It touched up with soft dove-gray, in which were shades of green and purple, the row of unpainted, ramshackle wooden cabins—­hovels of a colony of “squatters” that no zeal for civic improvement had ever been able to dislodge—­lined along a part of the embankment, and wrought indefinable glories in the unkempt marshes, stretching away into shimmering distances, where factory windows blazed as if from inner conflagration and steam and smoke became roseate or iridescent.

The tall stranger, so much better dressed than the men who usually strolled on the embankment at this hour of a week-day afternoon, fixed her attention to such a degree as to make her forget that she herself was probably a subject of curiosity and speculation among the passers-by.  It was with a little disappointment that as she came nearer she said to herself, “It’s only—­that man.”  Common fairness, however, obliged her to add that he seemed “more like a gentleman” than she had supposed.  That he was good-looking, in a big, blond, Scotch or Scandinavian way, she had acknowledged from the first.  On recognizing Davenant her impulse was to pass him with the slightest recognition, but on second thoughts it seemed best to her to end the affair impending between them once for all.

“I’m sorry you didn’t wait for me to come downstairs the other day,” she said, after they had exchanged greetings, “because I could have told you that my father agreed with me—­that it wouldn’t be possible for us to accept your kind help.”

“I hope he’s better,” was Davenant’s only answer.

“Much better, thank you.  When he’s able to see you, I know he will want to express his gratitude more fully than I can.”

“I hoped he’d be able to see me to-day.  I was on my way to Tory Hill.”

She was annoyed both by his persistency and by the coolness of his manner, as, leaning on his stick, he stood looking down at her.  He looked down in a way that obliged her to look up.  She had not realized till now how big and tall he was.  She noticed, too, the squareness of his jaw, the force of his chin, and the compression of his straight, thin lips beneath the long curve of his mustache.  In spite of his air of granite imperturbability, she saw that his fair skin was subject to little flushes of embarrassment or shyness, like a girl’s.  As she was in a mood to criticize, she called this absurd and said of his blue eyes, resting on her with a pensive directness, as though he were studying her from a long way off, that they were hard.  Deep-set and caverned under heavy, overhanging brows, they more than any other feature imparted to his face the frowning and farouche effect by which she judged him.  Had it not been for that, her hostility to everything he said and did might not have been so prompt.  That he was working to get her into his power became more than ever a conviction the minute she looked into what she called that lowering gaze.

All the same, the moment was one for diplomatic action rather than for force.  She allowed a half-smile to come to her lips, and her voice to take a tone in which there was frank request, as she said:  “I wish you wouldn’t go.”