ft out.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND
STOCKINGS--ASSUMPTION OF THE GOD-HEAD

As Darcy Faircloth prophesied, the wild weather lasted throughout that
week. Then, the rain having rained itself out, the wind backed and the
skies cleared. But all to a different mode and rhythm. A cold white sun
shone out of a cold blue sky, diapered, to the north above the indigo and
umber moorland and forest, with perspectives of tenuous silken-white
cloud. Land and sky were alike washed clean, to a starkness and nakedness
calling for warm clothing out of doors, and well-stoked fires within.

At the beginning of the next week, invited by that thin glinting
sunshine--beneath which the sea still ran high, in long, hollow-backed
waves, brokenly foam-capped and swirling--Damaris came forth from her
retreat, sufficiently convalescent to take up the ordinary routine of
life again. But this, also, to a changed mode and rhythm, having its
source in causes more recondite and subtle than any matter of fair or
foul weather.

To begin with she had, in the past week, crossed a certain bridge there
is no going back over for whoso, of her sex, is handicapped or
favoured--in mid-nineteenth century the handicap rather than the favour
counted even more heavily than it does to-day, though even to-day, as
some of us know to our cost, it still counts not a little!--by possession
of rarer intelligence, more lively moral and spiritual perceptions, than
those possessed by the great average of her countrymen or countrywomen.
Damaris' crossing of that bridge--to carry on the figure--affected her
thought of, and relation to everyone and everything with which she now
came in contact. She had crossed other bridges on her eighteen years'
journey from infancy upwards; but, compared with this last, they had been
but airy fantastic structures, fashioned of hardly more substantial stuff
than dreams are made of.--Thus, anyhow, it appeared to her as she lay
resting in her pink-and-white curtained bed, watching the loose
rose-sprays tremble against the rain-spattered window-panes.--For this
last bridge was built of the living stones of fact, of deeds actually
done; and, just because it was so built, for one of her perceptions and
temperament, no recrossing of it could be possible.

So much to begin with.--To go on with, even before Dr. McCabe granted her
permission to emerge from retirement, all manner of practical matte