Her confidence in him was soothing. She was so serious and innocent, so quick with a country girl's delicate observation of nature, that he fell into a more placid state of mind. She became more friendly all the while, till, despite her confession of shyness, she fairly prattled. He let her run on, scarcely listening, busy with his own thoughts. And so, up the long road to the almshouse, resting in the pale sunshine occasionally, through the Park to the end of the Haight Street cable-line they walked, and talked ingenuously.
She lived in "The Mission," and there, having nothing better to do, he escorted her, and at last, in that jumble of wooden buildings so multitudinously prosaic, between the Twin Peaks and the Old Mission, he left her. She bade him good-by apparently with regret. Widely different as they were in mind and temperament, they had, for their hour, come closely together. Now they were to recede, never again, perhaps, to meet.
He walked in town along Valencia Street, through that curious "hot belt" which defies the town's normal state of weather, turned up Van Ness Avenue, still too busy with his reflections to shut himself up in his studio. It was Sunday morning--he had almost forgotten the day--and he turned up his collar, to conceal what he could of his evening attire and its wilted, rumpled linen, somewhat uncomfortable in the presence of the church-going throngs which pervaded the avenue.
He had reached the top of the long slope leading to the Black Point military reservation, and was pausing upon the corner of Lombard Street, when, looking up the hill, he saw Clytie Payson coming down the steep, irregular pathway that did service for a sidewalk. He stepped behind a lamp-post and watched her, uncertain whether or not to let her see him.
She came tripping down, picking her way along the cleated double plank, too intent upon her footsteps to look far ahead. The sight of her made him a little trepid with excitement; it focused his dissatisfaction with himself. He knew, now, what had disturbed him. It was the thought of her. She had forced him to look at himself from a new point of view, with a new, critical vision. He longed for her approval. Her gentle coercion was drawing him into new channels of life, and he felt a sudden need for her help. He was losing his whilom comrades, his old familiar associations repelled him. He had nothing to sustain him now, but the thought of her friendship.