"I'm not ungrateful to Henrietta," Damaris said, breaking silence softly yet abruptly, as speaking to herself rather than addressing him, in apology and argument. "And I'm dreadfully sorry to have vexed her--for she was vexed with me for not staying at the Pavilion to-night, as I promised. She was really quite cross." "She will get over that--never fear," Carteret answered off the surface. "Still it troubles me to have vexed her. I must have seemed so unreasonable, making silly sounding excuses--because I could not explain to her why I really wanted so much to go home." "You find a limit to the dear lady's powers of comprehension or of sympathy?" he asked, again off the surface. "I suppose I must do so, because there are things it never occurs to one to speak of to Henrietta." "Whole cartloads of them," Carteret comprehensively agreed. "And yet I don't know why." "Don't you? Well, I think I do perhaps know why; and knowing, I must confess to being not altogether sorry your confidences are restricted, dear witch, in that particular direction." The use of the pet name, though involuntary--possibly on that very account--eased his fever. Clearly he must get back to their former relation. Rejoice in her beauty, in her sweet faith and dependence, love her--yes--he admitted the word,--but for God's sake keep the physical side out of the business. Damaris' easily-aroused loyalty, meanwhile, caught alight. "Oh, but we've just been Henrietta's guests," she said, with a pretty mingling of appeal and rebuke--"and it seems hardly kind, does it, to find faults in her. She has been beautifully good to me all this time, ending up with this dance which she gave on purpose to please me." "And herself also," Carteret returned. --Yes decidedly he felt better, steadier, to the point of now trusting himself to look at his companion, notwithstanding the strange influences abroad in the magical moonlight, with his accustomed smiling, half-amused indulgence. The unremitting trample of the waves, there on the right, made for level-headedness actually if a little mercilessly--so he thought. "I don't wish to be guilty of taking Mrs. Frayling's name in vain a second time," he went on--"you've pulled me up, and quite rightly, for doing so once already--but depend upon it, she enjoyed her ball every morsel as much as you did. In respect of the minor delights of existence, she slumbers not nor sleeps, our perenially charming and skilful Henrietta." "You think she enjoyed it too? I am glad." Then after an interval of silence, her whole figure alert, her speech eager: "See there--see there, Colonel Sahib--yes, far, far out to sea--aren't those the lights of a ship?" "Yes," he answered--"creeping westward--bound for Toulon, most likely, or possibly for Marseilles."