te my own--and--and--which I couldn't
help loving."

"Heigh ho! heigh ho!" Carteret put in softly. "This becomes exciting,
dear witch, you know."

"I don't want to be tantalizing," she answered him, still pacing in the
growing dimness of land and sea.

The dead black mass of the great ilex trees looked to touch the low
hanging sky. A grey gleam, here and there, lit the surface of the
swirling tide-river. The boom of the slow plunging waves came from the
back of the Bar, and now and again wild-fowl cried, faint and distant,
out on the mud-flats of the Haven.

"Listen," Damaris said. "It is mournful here. It tells you the same
things over and over again. It sort of insists on them. The place seems
so peaceful, but it never lets you alone, really. And now, after what
happened, it never leaves him--the Commissioner Sahib--alone. It repeats
the same story to him over and over again. It wears him as dropping water
wears away stone. And there is no longer the same reason for staying
there was at first. Persuade him to go away, to take me abroad. And come
with us--couldn't you?--for a little while at least. Is it selfish to ask
you to leave your hunting and shooting so early in the season? I don't
want to be selfish. But he isn't well. Whether he isn't well in his body
or only in his thinkings, I can't tell. But it troubles me. He sleeps
badly, I am afraid. The nights must be very long and lonely when one
can't sleep.--If you would come, it would be so lovely. I should feel so
safe about him. You and the book should cure him between you. I'm
perfectly sure of that. To have you would make us both so happy"--

And, in her innocent importunity, Damaris slipped her hand within Colonel
Carteret's arm sweetly coaxing him.

He started slightly. Threw back his head, standing, straight and tall, in
the mysterious twilight beside her. Raised his deerstalker cap, for a
moment, letting the moist chill of the November evening dwell on his hair
and forehead.

Though very popular with women, Carteret had never married, making a home
for his elder sister, Mrs. Dreydel--widow of a friend and fellow officer
in the then famous "Guides"--and her four sturdy, good-looking boys at
the Norfolk manor-house, which had witnessed his own birth and those of a
long line of his ancestors. To bring up a family of his own, in addition
to his sister's, would have been too costly, and debt he abhorred.
Therefore, such devoirs as he paid the great goddes