olding him thus in open converse with her
father, the wings of love were scorched by the flame of jealousy--not so
much of the young man himself, as of a past which he stood for and in
which she had no part. Therefore to run--yes, run and hide from further
knowledge, further experience and revelation, to claim the privileges,
since she was called on to endure the smart, of isolation.--Yet to run,
as she almost directly began to reason, was not only cowardly but
useless. Fact remains fact, and if she refused to accept it, range
herself in line with it to-day, she in nowise negatived but merely
postponed the event. If not to-day, then to-morrow she was bound to empty
the cup. And she laughed at the specious half-truth which had appeared so
splendid and exhilarating a discovery--the half-truth that nothing is
really inevitable unless you yourself will it to be so. For this was
inevitable, sooner or later unescapable, fight against it, fly from it as
she might.

Therefore she must stay, whether she liked it or not--stay, because to do
otherwise was purposeless, because she couldn't help herself, because
there was nowhere to run to, in short--

She heard footsteps upon the flags outside the garden door, speech, calm
and restrained, of which she could not distinguish the import.
Mechanically Damaris gathered the scattered house-keeping books lying
before her upon the table--baker's, butcher's, grocer's, corn-chandler's,
coal-merchant's--into a tight little heap; and, folding her hands on the
top of them, prayed simply, almost wordlessly, for courage to hold the
balance even, to seek not her own good but the good of those two others,
to do right. Then she waited.

The door opened, closed, and, after a minute's pause, one of the two
men--Damaris did not know which, she could not bring herself to
look--coming from between the stumpy pillars walked towards her down the
half-length of the room; and bent over her, resting one hand on the back
of her chair, the other on the leather inlay of the writing-table just
beside the little pile of house-books.

The hand was young, sunburnt, well-shaped, the finger nails well kept.
Across the back of it a small-bodied, wide-winged sea-bird, in apparent
act of flight, and the letters D.V.F. were tattooed in blue and crimson.
A gold bangle, the surface of it dented in places and engraved with
Japanese characters, encircled the fine lean wrist. These Damaris saw,
and they worked upon her str