She held out her bare hands, and doubled them up, putting them together to scrutinize the delicate backs of them for the effect of an hour’s Windover sun. Her dark purple gloves and the saxifrage lay in her lap. Bayard held the sun-umbrella over her. It gave him a curious sense of event to perform this little courtesy; it was so long since he had been among ladies, and lived like other gentlemen; he felt as if he had been upon a journey in strange lands and were coming home again. A blossom of the saxifrage fell to the hem of her dress, and over upon the sand. He delicately touched and took it, saying nothing.
“Does Mr. Hermon Worcester come and pour pitch and things on the bonfire?” asked Helen suddenly.
“I thought you knew,” said Bayard, “my uncle has disinherited me. He is not pleased with what I have done.”
“Ah! I did not know. Doesn’t he—excuse me, Mr. Bayard. It is not my business.”
“He writes to me,” said Bayard. “He sent me things when I was sick. He was very kind then. We have not quarreled at all. But it is some time since I have seen him. I am very fond of my uncle. He is an old man, you know. He was brought up so—We mustn’t blame him. He thinks I am on the road to perdition. He doesn’t come to Windover.”
“I see,” said Helen. She leaned her head back against the boulder and looked through half-shut lids at the dashing sea. The wind was rising.
“I must go,” she said abruptly.
“May I take you over to the station?” he asked with boyish anxiety.
“Mr. Salt is going to harness old Pepper,” she answered. Bayard said nothing. He remembered that he could not afford to drive a lady to the station; he could not offer to “take” her in the electric conveyance of the great American people. He might have spent at least three quarters of an hour more beside her. It seemed to him that he had not experienced poverty till now. The exquisite outline of his lip trembled for the instant with that pathos which would have smitten a woman to the heart if she had loved him. Helen was preoccupied with her saxifrage and her purple gloves. She did not, to all appearance, see his face at all, and he was glad of it.
He arose in silence, and walked beside her to the beach and towards the town.