s of things to think
about, that I get absorbed in them and can't attend sometimes directly
on the minute."

"Absent-mindedness should be corrected rather than encouraged," Miss
Bilson announced, sententious even amid her tears.

"Oh! it amounts to more than absent-mindedness I'm afraid--a sort of
absent-every-thingedness when it overtakes me. For the whole of me seems
to go away and away, hand in hand and all together," Damaris said, her
eyes alight with questions and with dreams. "But don't let us discuss
that now," she added. "It would waste time, and it is you who must go
away and away, Billy, if you are not to put the poor Miss Minetts into a
frantic fuss by being late for tea. They will think some accident has
happened to you. Don't beep them in suspense, it is simply
barbarous.--Good-bye, and don't hurry back. I have heaps to amuse me.
I'll not expect you till dinner-time."

Thus did it come about that Damaris reposed in a deck chair, under the
shade of the great ilex trees, gazing idly at the webs of steamer smoke
hanging low in the southern sky, at the long yellow-grey ridge of the Bar
between river and sea, and at the cormorants posturing in the hot
afternoon sunshine upon the sand.

Truly she was free to send forth her soul upon whatever far fantastic
journey she pleased. But souls are perverse, not to be driven at will,
choosing their own times and seasons for travel. And hers, just now,
proved obstinately home-staying--had no wings wherewith to fly, but must
needs crawl a-fourfoot, around all manner of inglorious personal matters.
For that skirmish with her ex-governess, though she successfully bridled
her tongue and conquered by kindness rather than by smiting, had clouded
her inward serenity, not only by its inherent uselessness, but by
reminding her indirectly of an occurrence which it was her earnest desire
to forget.

Indirectly, mention of her beloved nurse, Sarah Watson--who journeying
back from a visit to her native Lancashire, just this time last year, had
met death swift and hideous in a railway collision--recalled to Damaris
the little scene, of a week ago, with Tom Verity when ho had asked her,
in the noonday sunshine out on the Bar, for some explanation of his
strange nocturnal experience. She went hot all over now, with exaggerated
childish shame, thinking of it. For had not she, Damaris Verity, though
nurtured in the creed that courage is the source and mother of all
virtues, shown the