wder-grey
trunk--the main road forks. Damaris turned to the left, across the
single-arch stone bridge spanning the Arne, and drove on up the long
winding ascent from the valley to the moorland and fir plantations which
range inland behind Stourmouth. This constituted the goal of her journey,
for once the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of country open out far
as the eye carries to the fine, bare outline of the Wiltshire downs.

She checked the horse, letting it walk, while she took stock of her
surroundings.

It may be asserted that there are two ways of holding converse with
Nature. The one is egotistic and sentimental, an imposing of personal
tastes and emotions which betrays the latent categoric belief that the
existence of external things is limited to man's apprehension of them--a
vilely conceited if not actually blasphemous doctrine! The other is that
of the seeker and the seer, who, approaching in all reverence, asks no
more than leave to listen to the voice of external things--recognizing
their independent existence, knowing them to be as real as he is, as
wonderful, in their own order as permanent, possibly as potent even for
good and evil as himself. And it was, happily, according to this latter
reading of the position, instinctively, by the natural bent of her mind,
that Damaris attempted converse with the world without.

The glory of the heather had passed, the bloom now showing only as
silver-pink froth upon an ocean of warm brown. But the colouring was
restful, the air here on the dry gravel soil light and eager, and the
sense of height and space exhilarating. A fringe of harebells, of orange
hawkweed and dwarf red sorrel bordered the road. Every small oasis of
turf, amongst the heath and by the wayside, carried its pretty crop of
centaury and wild thyme, of bed-straw, milkwort, and birdsfoot trefoil.
Furzechats tipped about the gorse bushes, uttering a sharp, gay, warning
note. A big flight of rooks, blue-black against the ethereal blue of the
distance, winged their way slowly homeward to the long avenue of dark
trees leading to a farm in the valley. The charm of the place was clear
and sane, its beauty simple almost to austerity. This the young girl
welcomed. It washed her imagination free of the curious questionings,
involuntary doubts and suspicions, which the house and garden at The
Hard, steeped in tradition, thick with past happenings, past passions,
were prone to breed in her. No reek off the