“Mr. Walton. I owe you an enormous apology, I’m afraid. It was very kind indeed of you to think of coming along to give me warning. I was a pig to you.”
“Not a bit,” Anthony averred, scrambling eagerly down the little bank to join her on the little grassy ledge a dozen feet down from the cliff’s lip. “It was most natural. I ought to apologise if anyone should. Frightfully tactless.”
“Not at all!” said the girl warmly. “It was entirely my fault. But if you’ll forgive me, we’ll say no more about it. Now let’s sit down here and make ourselves comfortable, because I’m going to take you at your word.”
“Do, please,” Anthony said earnestly, as he seated himself on the warm, springy turf at her side. “I should be awfully proud.”
The girl clasped her arms round her knees and stared out to sea. Anthony, glancing at her covertly, noted with approval the firm and resolute lines of her profile. She could not be more than one- or two-and-twenty, he decided, but even he could read an experience beyond her years of the world, its trials and its anxieties in the tiny lines of care about her mouth and the faint markings on her white forehead.
“You said something about my needing help,” she said slowly, as if choosing her words with care. “Well, why should I be silly and pretend I don’t? I do need it. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you; but I feel I can trust you, and there’s nobody else to whom I can speak. Not a single soul. I suppose you know that—that⸺”
“Yes,” Anthony interrupted gently. “I think I know all the facts.”
“I supposed so, or you wouldn’t have said that.” She fixed her big, sorrowful brown eyes on Anthony’s face. “But what you don’t know, Mr. Walton, is that a police inspector from Scotland Yard was with me for nearly two hours this morning, asking me the most horrible questions!”
A cold hand seemed to lay itself over Anthony’s heart. “I say, was he really?” he muttered. “No, I didn’t know that.”
The girl nodded. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned her head quickly away. A little quiver shook her body. Then suddenly the control that had borne her up all this time, ever since that dreadful interview in the morning, gave way before Anthony’s silent sympathy. She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.