"Sit down at once," she said with ready sympathy. "Here, take this," and she made to give him the canvas chair from which she had risen at the first alarm.
He dropped to the sand with suspicious ease.
"I shall be quite comfortable here," he said. "Please go on with your painting. I always find it soothing to watch an artist at work."
"I must be going home now," she answered. "I obtain this effect only at a certain stage of tide, and early in the day. You see, the Tor changes his appearance so rapidly when the sun travels round to the south."
"Do you live at Tormouth?" he ventured to ask.
"Half a mile out."
"Will you allow me to carry something for you? I find that I have broken two ribs—of your umbrella," he added instantly, seeing that those radiant eyes of hers had turned on him with quick solicitude.
"Pity," she murmured, "bamboo is so much harder to mend than bone. No—you will not carry anything. I think, if you are staying at the Swan, you will find a path up a little hollow in the cliff about a hundred yards from here."
"Yes, and if you, too, are going——"
"In the opposite direction."