to the contents of his plate,
quietly went on with the business of luncheon. Damaris meanwhile,
conscience-stricken--she couldn't tell why--by this silent interchange
of intelligence, this silent demand on his forbearance, on his
connivance in her secrecy, laid the letter face downwards on the white
table-cloth, unopened.

Later, Sir Charles Verity being busy with his English correspondence and
Carteret having disappeared--gone for a solitary walk, as she divined,
being, as she feared, not quite pleased with her--she read it in the
security of her bedroom, seated, for greater ease, upon the polished
parquet floor just inside an open, southward-facing French window, where
the breeze coming up off the sea gently fanned her face.

The letter began without preamble:

"We made this port--Genoa--last night. All day we have been discharging
cargo. Half my crew has gone ashore, set on liquoring and wenching after
the manner of unregenerate sailor-men all the world over. The other half
follows their bad example to-morrow, as we shall be lying idle in honour
of the Christmas festival. On board discipline is as strict as I know how
to make it, but ashore my hand is lifted off them. So long as they turn
up on time they are free to follow their fancy, even though it lead them
to smutty places. My own fancies don't happen to lie that way, for which
I in nowise praise myself. It is an affair of absence of inclination
rather than overmuch active virtue. I am really no better than they,
seeing I yield to the only temptation which takes me--the temptation to
write to you. I have resisted it times out of number since I bade you
good-bye at The Hard. But Christmas-night turns one a bit soft and
craving for sight and touch of those who belong to one. So much I dare
say, though I go back on nothing I said to you then about the keeping up
of decent barriers. Only being Christmas-night-soft I give myself the
licence of a holiday--for once. The night is clear as glass and the city
rises in a great semicircle, pierced by and outlined in twinkling lights,
right up to the ring of forts crowning the hills, where the sky begins--a
sky smothered in stars. I have been out, on deck, looking at it all, at
the black masts and funnels of the ships ranging to right and left
against the glare of the town, and at the oily, black water, thick with
floating filth and garbage and with wandering reflections like jewels and
precious metals on the surface of it