“Do you think so?” she rejoined coldly. “For my part, I hate it.”
He was surprised at the unexpected emphasis of her tone—the first time, indeed, that she had shown any signs of interest in the conversation.
“Kind of dull I suppose you find it,” he remarked pensively, looking out across the waste of lavender-grown marshes, sand hummocks piled with seaweed, and a far distant line of pebbled shore. “And yet, I don’t know. I have lived by the sea a good deal, and however monotonous it may seem at first, there’s always plenty of change, really. Tide and wind do such wonderful work.”
She, too, was looking out now towards the sea.
“Oh, it isn’t exactly that,” she said quietly. “I am quite willing to admit what all the tourists and chance visitors call the fascination of these places. I happen to dislike them, that is all. Perhaps it is because I live here, because I see them day by day; perhaps because the sight of them and the thought of them have become woven into my life.”
She was talking half to herself. For a moment, even the knowledge of his presence had escaped her. Hamel, however, did not realise that fact. He welcomed her confidence as a sign of relaxation from the frigidity of her earlier demeanour.
“That seems hard,” he observed sympathetically. “It seems odd to hear you talk like that, too. Your life, surely, ought to be pleasant enough.”
She looked away from the sea into his face. Although the genuine interest which she saw there and the kindly expression of his eyes disarmed annoyance, she still stiffened slightly.
“Why ought it?”
The question was a little bewildering.