is usually
figured--had neither lot nor part in it. Such projections of personality
are best comparable, in this respect, to the dreams which seize us in the
very act of waking--vivid, coherent and complete, yet ended by the
selfsame sound or touch by which they are evoked.

In Damaris' case, before the scarlet, dyeing the cloud dapple, warmed to
rose, or the dense metallic sea caught reflections of the sunrise,
broadening incandescence, her errant consciousness was again cognizant
of, subjected to, her immediate surroundings. She was aware, moreover,
that the morning sharpness began to take a too unwarrantable liberty
with her thinly clad person for comfort. She hastily locked the casements
together; and then waited, somewhat dazed by the breathless pace of her
strange and tender excursion, looking about her in happy amazement.

And, so doing, her eyes lighted upon a certain oblong parcel lying on her
dressing-table. There was the charmingly pleasant something which awaited
her attention! A present, and the most costly, the most enchanting one
(save possibly the green jade elephant of her childish adoration) she had
ever received!

She picked up, not only the precious parcel, but a hand-mirror lying near
it; and, thus armed, bestowed herself, once more, in her still warm bed.

The last forty-eight hours had been fertile in experiences and in events,
among which the arrival of this gift could by no means be accounted the
least exciting.--Hordle had brought the packet here to her, last night,
about an hour after she and her father--standing under the portico--waved
reluctant farewells to Colonel Carteret, as the hotel omnibus bore him
and his baggage away to the station to catch the mail train through to
Paris. This parting, when it actually came about, proved more distressing
than she had by any means prefigured. She had no notion beforehand what a
really dreadful business she would find it, after these months of close
association, to say good-bye to the man with the blue eyes.

"We shall miss you at every turn, dear, dear Colonel Sahib," she almost
tearfully assured him. "How we are going ever to live without you I
don't know."

And impulsively, driven by the excess of her emotion to the point of
forgetting accustomed habits and restraints, she put up her lips for a
kiss. Which, thus invited, kiss Carteret, taking her face in both hands
for the minute, bestowed upon her forehead rather than upon those
proffered l