"I've been hoping I might see you," she said, "to apologize for the reception you received the last time you called. I can't tell you how unhappy it made me, nor how I regret it."
"Mayn't I see you a while now?" He felt at such a disadvantage in his present condition that it was embarrassing to be with her, and yet he longed for another hour of companionship.
"Let's walk down to the Point," she said. "I can get in the reservation, and it will be beautiful."
As they walked down across the empty space at the foot of the avenue and along the board-walk over the sand, she talked inconsequently of the day and the scene, evidently attempting to put him at his ease. The little girl from Santa Rosa had given him a passive comfort. Clytie's companionship was an active and inspiring joy. His depression ceased; a sane, wholesome content filled him. He watched her graceful, leopard-like swing and the evidences of vitality that impelled her movements.
They passed the sentry who nodded to her at the gate, went past the officers' quarters, down a little path lined with piled cannon-balls, out to a small promontory that overlooked the harbor. Here there was an old Spanish brass cannon in its wooden mortar-carriage, and a seat on the very edge of the bluff. The harbor extended wide to the southeast. Inshore was a covey of white-sailed yachts in regatta, just tacking, to beat across to Lime Point, opposite.
As they sat down, Clytie said, "Now do tell me about Miss Gray. How is she?"
"She's not with me any more."
She lifted her brows. "Where is she?"
"I don't know, quite."
"You haven't seen her since she left?"