"I should like to believe so--but all that's relative, isn't it? The real wrongness of what you do, depends upon the level of rightness you start from, I mean." "Insatiable casuist!" Carteret tenderly laughed at her. And with that, by common though unspoken consent, they walked onward again. Even while so doing, however, both were sensible that this resumption of their homeward journey marked a period in, rather than the conclusion of, their conversation. Some outside compelling force--so in any case it appeared to Carteret--encompassed them. It was useless to turn and double, indulge in gently playful digression. That force would inevitably make them face the innermost of their own thought, their own emotion, in the end. In obedience to which unwelcome conviction, Carteret presently brought himself to ask her: "And about this other person--for we have wandered a bit from the point at issue, haven't we?--whose interests as I gather clash, for some reason, with those of your father, and whose pride and honour you are so jealously anxious to safeguard." "His pride, yes," Damaris said quickly, her head high, a warmth in her tone. "His honour is perfectly secure, in my opinion." "Whose honour is in danger then?--Dear witch, forgive me, but don't you see the implication?" Damaris looked around at him with unfathomable eyes. Her lips parted, yet she made no answer. After a pause Carteret spoke again, and, to his own hearing, his voice sounded hoarse as that of the tideless sea upon the beach yonder. "Do you mean me to understand that the conflict between your father's interests and those of this other person--this other man's--arise from the fact that you love him?" "Yes," Damaris calmly declared. "Love him,"--having gone thus far Carteret refused to spare himself. He turned the knife in the wound--"Love him to the point of marriage?" There, the word was said. Almost unconsciously he walked onward without giving time for her reply.--He moistened his lips, weren't they dry as a cinder? He measured the height to which hope had borne him, to-night, by the shock, the positive agony of his existing fall. At the young girl, _svelte_ and graceful, beside him, he could not look; but kept his eyes fixed on the mass of the wooded promontory, dark and solid against the more luminous tones of water and of sky, some half-mile distant. Set high upon the further slope of it, from here invisible, the Grand Hotel fronted--as he knew--the eastward trending coast. Carteret wished the distance less, since he craved the shelter of that friendly yellow-washed caravanserai. He would be mortally thankful to find himself back there, and alone, the door of his bachelor quarters shut--away from the beat of the waves, away from the subtle glory of this Venus-ridden moon now drawing down to her setting. Away, above all, from Damaris--delivered from the enchantments and perturbations, both physical and moral, her delicious neighbourhood provoked.