your case to a marvel. So
I abdicate."

"But why? Why abdicate? Do you mean go away? Then Henrietta was right.
What she said was true. I never believed her. I"--

Damaris grew tall in her shame and anger. The solemn eyes blazed.

"Yes--pray go," she said. "It's unwarrantable the way I kept you
here--the way I've made use of you. But, indeed, indeed, I am very
grateful, Colonel Sahib. I ought to have known better. But I didn't. I
have been so accustomed all my life to your help that I took it all for
granted. I never thought how much I taxed your forbearance or encroached
on your time.--That isn't quite true though. I did have scruples; but
little things you said and did put my scruples to sleep. I liked having
them put to sleep.--Now you must not let me or my business interfere any
more.--Oh! you've treated me, given to me, like a prince," she declared,
rising superior to anger and to shame, her eyes shining--"like a king.
Nobody can ever take your place or be to me what you've been. I shall
always love to think of your goodness to--to him--my father--and to
me--always--all my life."

Damaris held out her hands.

"And that's all.--Now let us say no more about this. It's difficult. It
hurts us both, I fancy, a little."

But Carteret did not take her proffered hands.

"Dear witch," he said, "we've spoken so freely that I am afraid we must
speak more freely still--even though it pains you a little perhaps, and
myself, almost certainly very much more. I love you--not as a friend, not
as an amiable elderly person should love a girl of your age.--This isn't
an affair of yesterday or the day before yesterday. You crept into my
heart on your sixth birthday--wasn't it?--when I brought you a certain
little green jade elephant from our incomparable Henrietta, and found you
asleep in a black marble chair, set on a blood-red sandstone platform,
overlooking the gardens of the club at Bhutpur. And you have never crept
out of it again--won't do so as long as body and mind hang together, or
after. It has been a song of degrees.--For years you were to me a
delicious plaything; but a plaything with a mysterious soul, after which
I felt, every now and again, in worship and awe. The plaything stage came
to an end when I was here with you before we went to Paris, four years
ago. For I found then, beyond all question of doubt, that I loved you as
a man only loves once, and as most men never love at all. I have tried
to keep this from