Whereupon he went back to bed; and slept profoundly, royally, until Hordle the man-servant, moving about the bright chintz bedecked room, preparing his bath and laying out his clothes, awoke him to the sweetness of another summer day. CHAPTER V BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA "We had a grand talk last night--Sir Charles was in splendid form. I enjoyed it down to the ground." Tom Verity lay, at full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious idleness letting the earth cradle and the sun soak into him. Doubts and disturbances of last night melted in daylight to an almost ludicrous nothingness and self-confidence reigned; so that he declared the world a super-excellent place, snapping his fingers at problems and mysteries. A spark of curiosity pricked him still, it is true, concerning the origin of certain undeniably queer aural phenomena. He meant to satisfy that curiosity presently; but the subject must be approached with tact. He must wait on opportunity. A few paces from and above him, Damaris sat on the crown of the ridge, where the light southerly wind, coming up now and again off the sea, fanned her. A white knitted jersey, pulled on over her linen dress, moulded the curve of her back, the round of her breasts and turn of her waist, showing each movement of her gracious young body to the hips, as she leaned forward, her knees drawn up and her feet planted among the red, orange, and cream-grey flints and pebbles. Looking up at her, Tom saw her face foreshortened in the shade of her broad brimmed garden hat, a soft clear flush on it born of health, fresh air and sunlight, her eyes shining, the blue of the open sea in their luminous depths. He received a new impression of her. She belonged to the morning, formed part of the gladness of universal Nature, an unfettered nymph-like being. To-day her mood was sprightly, bidding farewell to ceremony. Yet, he felt, she remained perplexing, because more detached than is the feminine habit, poised and complete in herself. And this detachment, this suppression of the sentimental or social note--he being admittedly a very personable fellow--piqued Tom's male vanity, so that he rallied her with: "But by the way, why did you vanish so early, why didn't you stay with us after dinner last night?" "I did not want to vanish," she answered. "Nothing is more delightful than hearing my father talk. But had I stayed Miss Bilson would have supposed herself free to stay too, and that would have spoiled the evening. My father doesn't choose to talk freely before Miss Bilson, because she gets into a foolish excited state and interrupts and asks questions. She overflows with admiration and that annoys and bores him."