me hear. I had to be quite truthful with him
about it; but I was bewildered and ill. I blurted things out rather I'm
afraid, and hurt him more than I need have done. I was so taken by
surprise, you see."

"Yes, I see," Carteret said, regardless of strict veracity. For he didn't
see, though he believed himself on the road to seeing and that some
matter of singular moment.

"He was beautiful to me--beautiful about everything--everybody," she
asserted. "And we love one another not less, but more, he and I--of that
I am sure. Only it's different--different. We can't either of us quite go
back to the time before--and that has helped to make him sad."

Carteret listened in increasing interest aware that he sounded
unlooked-for depths, apprehensive lest those depths should harbour
disastrous occurrences. He walked the length of the terrace before again
speaking. Then, no longer teasing but gently and seriously, he asked her:

"Do you feel free to tell me openly about this, and let me try to help
you--if it's a case for help?"

Damaris shook her head, looking up at him through the soft enclosing
murk, and smiling rather ruefully.

"I wish I knew--I do so wish I knew," she said. "But I don't--not yet,
anyway. Help me without my telling you, please. The book is a splendid
idea. And then do you think you could persuade him to let us go away
abroad, for a time? Everything here must remind him--as it does me--of
what happened. It was quite right," she went on judicially--"for
everyone's sake, we should stay here just the same at first. People,"
with a scornful lift of the head Carteret noted and admired--"might have
mistaken our reason for going away. They had to be made to understand we
were perfectly indifferent.--I knew all that, though we never discussed
it. One does things, sometimes, just because it's right they should be
done, without any sort of planning--just by instinct. Still I know we
can't be quite natural here. What happened comes between us. We're each
anxious about the other and feel a constraint, though we never speak of
it. That can't be avoided, I suppose, for we both suffered a good deal at
the time--but he most, much the most because"--

Damaris paused.

"Because why?"

"I suppose because I'm young; and then, once I got accustomed to the
idea, I saw it meant what was very wonderful in some ways--a
wonderfulness which, for me, would go on and on--a whole new country for
me to explore and travel in, qui