“Oh, I’d love to go, but I’ve heard it’s a queer kind of a place, or something.”
“I’ll take care of you. Can you walk a lot?”
“Of course!”
But like all San Franciscans, she was a bad walker, and she felt very weary as they tramped along the Cliff House road. However, she was much interested in the many carriages flashing past, and too proud to confess herself unequal to the manly stride beside her. Cecil did not suit his pace to hers. He kept up a steady tramp—his back very erect, his head in the air. Lee forgot her theories, and thought him adorable. His shyness wore off by degrees, and he talked constantly, not of his family life, but of his beloved Eton, from which he appeared to have been ruthlessly torn, and of his feats at cricket. He was a champion “dry bob,” he assured her proudly. Lee was deeply interested, but would have liked to talk about herself a little. He did not ask her a question; he was charmed with her sympathy, and confided his school troubles, piling up the agony, as her eyes softened and flashed. When she capped an anecdote of martyrdom with one from her own experience, he listened politely, but when she finished, hastened on with his own reminiscences, not pausing to comment. Lee experienced a slight chill, and the spring day seemed less brilliant, the people in the carriages less fair. But she was a child, the impression quickly passed, and her interest surrendered once more.
“We’ll be there in two minutes,” said Cecil. “Then we’ll have a cup of tea.”
“My mother doesn’t let me drink tea or coffee. She hopes I’ll have a complexion some day and be pretty.”
She longed for the masculine assurance that her beauty was a foregone conclusion, but Cecil replied:
“Oh! the idea of bothering about complexion. I like you because you’re not silly like other girls. You’ve got a lot of sense—just like a boy. Of course you mustn’t disobey your mother, but you must have something after that walk. You’ve got a lot of pluck, but I can see you’re blown a bit. Would she mind if you had a glass of wine? I’ve got ten dollars. My stepmother sent them to me.”
“My!—I don’t think she’d mind about the wine, I’ve never tasted it. Oh, goodness!”
They had mounted one of the rocks, and faced the ocean. Lee had thought the bay, girt with its colourous hills very beautiful, as they had trudged along the cliffs, but she had had glimpses of it many times from the heights of San Francisco. She had never seen the ocean before. Its roar thrilled her nerves, and the great green waves, rolling in with magnificent precision from the grey plain beyond, to leap abruptly over the outlying rocks, their spray glittering in the sunlight like a crust of jewels, filled her brain with new and inexpressible sensations. She turned suddenly to Cecil. His eyes met hers with deep impersonal sympathy; their souls mingled on the common ground of nervous exaltation. He moved closer to her and took her hand.