Damaris' first instinct was of flight. Just as when, out on the Bar with her cousin, Tom Verity, now nearly a month ago, overcome by a foreboding of far-reaching danger she had--to the subsequent bitter wounding of her self-respect and pride--shown the white feather, ignominiously turned tail and run away, was she tempted to run away now. For it seemed too much. It came too close, laying rough hands not only upon the deepest of her love and reverence for her father, but upon that still mysterious depth of her own nature, namely her apprehension of passion and of sex. A sacred shame, an awe as at the commission of some covert act of impiety, overcame her as she looked at the two men walking, side by side, across the moist vividly green carpet of turf in the chill white sunshine, the plain of an uneasy grey sea behind them. She wanted to hide herself, to close eyes and ears against further knowledge. Yes--it came too close; and at the same time made her feel, as never before, isolated and desolate--as though a great gulf yawned between her and what she had always counted pre-eminently her own, most securely her property because most beloved. She had spoken valiantly on Faircloth's behalf, had generously acted as his advocate; yet now, beholding him thus in open converse with her father, the wings of love were scorched by the flame of jealousy--not so much of the young man himself, as of a past which he stood for and in which she had no part. Therefore to run--yes, run and hide from further knowledge, further experience and revelation, to claim the privileges, since she was called on to endure the smart, of isolation.--Yet to run, as she almost directly began to reason, was not only cowardly but useless. Fact remains fact, and if she refused to accept it, range herself in line with it to-day, she in nowise negatived but merely postponed the event. If not to-day, then to-morrow she was bound to empty the cup. And she laughed at the specious half-truth which had appeared so splendid and exhilarating a discovery--the half-truth that nothing is really inevitable unless you yourself will it to be so. For this was inevitable, sooner or later unescapable, fight against it, fly from it as she might. Therefore she must stay, whether she liked it or not--stay, because to do otherwise was purposeless, because she couldn't help herself, because there was nowhere to run to, in short-- She heard footsteps upon the flags outside the garden door, speech, calm and restrained, of which she could not distinguish the import. Mechanically Damaris gathered the scattered house-keeping books lying before her upon the table--baker's, butcher's, grocer's, corn-chandler's, coal-merchant's--into a tight little heap; and, folding her hands on the top of them, prayed simply, almost wordlessly, for courage to hold the balance even, to seek not her own good but the good of those two others, to do right. Then she waited.