Bayre saw the matter now in a new light, and determined to make one more effort to solve the mystery of his uncle’s life, but to make it, not from the outside, in aggressive fashion, but in a mood more sympathetic towards the object of his surmises.
He was in this milder mood when, on the following morning, he met Olwen Eden on the seashore, watching the gradual rising of the water, as the tide came in, round the bases of the pillar-like rocks that fringed the island.
By the way in which she turned at his approach, very slowly, and without surprise, Bayre knew that she had been expecting to see him, perhaps waiting for him to find her.
“I’ve been anxious about you,” said he, as he took her hand.
Already there was a pleasant sense of shy freemasonry between them. No ordinary “Good-morning’s,” “How do you do’s?” and the like worrying necessities of the casual acquaintance were needed between them any longer.
“Anxious! Why?”
“Because of what happened last night. I was afraid he might be angry with you for taking my part.”
“Taking your part? How did I do that?”
“Well, I think, if you hadn’t cried out when you did, that my uncle would have brained me.”
“That’s what I thought. And that’s why I screamed. But, do you know, afterwards, when you’d gone away and he called me out on the landing to speak to me, and to tell me what had happened, I think I began to feel there was some excuse for him.”