ewhat possessive fashion. And as,
meeting his eyes, bravely if shyly, her colour deepened.

"You are happy?" he affirmed rather than asked.

"As the day is long," she answered him steadily.

"But the day's not been overlong, by chance, has it?"

"Not half long enough."

"All's well, then, still." He pressed her--"You aren't weary of me yet?"

Damaris reassuringly shook her head.

Nevertheless she was very sensible of change in the tenor of their
intercourse, sensible of a just perceptible hardness in his bearing and
aspect. For some cause, the nature of which she failed to divine though
she registered the fact of its existence, he no longer had complete faith
in her, was no longer wholly at one with her in sympathy and in belief.
He needed wooing, handling. And had she the knowledge and the art
successfully to handle this sun-browned, golden-bearded, rather
magnificent young master mariner--out here in the open too, the shout of
the great port in her ears, the dazzle of the water and the push of the
warm wind upon her face?

"Ah, why waste precious time in putting questions to which you surely
already know the answer?" with a touch of reproach she took him up. "Show
me rather where you live--where you eat and sleep, where you walk up and
down, walk quarter-deck, when you are far away there out at sea."

"Does all that really interest you?"

Damaris' lips quivered the least bit.

"Why have you turned perverse and doubting? Isn't it because they
interest me, above and beyond anything, beautifully interest me, that I
am here?--It would have been very easy to stay away, if I hadn't
wanted--as I do want--to be able to fancy you from morning until night,
to know where you sit, know just what you first see when in the grey of
the morning you first wake."

Faircloth continued to look at her; but his expression softened, gaining
a certain spirituality.

"I have questioned more than once to-day whether I had not been foolhardy
in letting you come here--whether distance wasn't safest, and the hunger
of absence sweeter than the full meal of your presence for--for both of
us, things being between us as they actually are. What if the bubble
burst?--I have had scares--hideous scares--lest you should be
disappointed in me."

"Or you in me?" Damaris said.

"No. Only your being disappointed in me could disappoint me in you--and
hardly that, because you'd have prejudice, facts even, natural and
obvious enough ones, upon