ng, the colour of a world of dreams, of
subdued and voiceless fancies. It was harmonious, restful as an
accompaniment to vision.--Damaris let it lap against her consciousness,
encircling, supporting this, as water laps, also encircling and
supporting--while caressing, mysteriously whispering against a boat's
side--a boat lying at its moorings, swinging gently upon an even
keel.--And her vision was of Faircloth, exclusively of him, just now.

For he had stayed to luncheon yesterday. A meal, to him in a sense
sacred, as being the first eaten by him in his father's house. So
graciously invited, how, indeed, could he do otherwise than stay? And,
the initial strangeness, the inherent wonder of that sacred character
wearing off, he found voice and talked not without eloquence. Talked of
his proper element, the sea, gaining ease and self-possession from the
magnitude and manifold enchantments of his theme.

To him, as to all true-born sailor-men--so Damaris divined--the world is
made of water, with but accident of land. Impeding, inconvenient accident
at that, too often blocking the passage across or through, and
constraining you to steer a foolishly, really quite inordinately
divergent course. Under this obstructive head the two Americas offend
direfully, sprawling their united strength wellnigh from pole to pole.
The piercing of their central isthmus promised some mitigation of this
impertinence of emergent matter; though whether in his, the speaker's
lifetime, remained--so he took it--open to doubt. The "roaring forties,"
and grim blizzard-ridden Fuegian Straits would long continue, as he
feared, to bar the way to the Pacific. Not that his personal fancy
favoured West so much as East. Not into the sunset but into the sunrising
did he love to sail some goodly black-hulled ship.--And as he talked,
more especially at his mention of this eastward voyaging, those manifold
enchantments of his calling stirred Damaris' imagination, making her
eyes bright as the fabled eyes of danger, and fathomless as well.

But the best came later. For, Mary having served coffee, Miss Felicia,
making an excuse of letters to be written, with pretty tact left them to
themselves. And Faircloth, returning after closing the door behind her
fluttering, gently eager figure, paused behind Damaris' chair.--Jacobean,
cane-panelled, with high-carved back and arms to it. Thomas Clarkson
Verity had unquestionably a nice taste in furniture.--The young
sea-cap