"How can I speak to you when I don't understand," she answered gravely. "Either you lie--which I should be sorry to accuse you of doing--or you tell me a very terrible thing, if, that is, I at all comprehend what you say.--Are you not the son of Mrs. Faircloth, who lives at the inn out by the black cottages?" "Yes, Lesbia Faircloth is my mother. And I ask for no better. She has squandered love upon me--squandered money, upon me too; but wisely and cleverly, with results. Still--" he paused--"well, it takes two, doesn't it, to make a man? One isn't one's mother's son only." "But Mrs. Faircloth is a widow," Damaris reasoned, in wondering directness. "I have heard people speak of her husband. She was married." "But not to my father. Do you ask for proofs--just think a minute. Whom did you mistake me for when I called you and came down over the Bar in the dusk?" "No--no--" she protested trembling exceedingly. "That is not possible. How could such a thing happen?" "As such things mostly do happen. It is not the first case, nor will it by a long way, I reckon, be the last. They were young, and--mayn't we allow--they were beautiful. That's often a good deal to do with these accidents. They met and, God help them, they loved." "No--no--" Damaris cried again. Yet she kept her hands on Faircloth's shoulders, clinging to him in the excessive travail of her innocent spirit--though he racked her--for sympathy and for help. "For whom, after all, did you take me?" he repeated. "If there wasn't considerable cause it would be incredible you should make such a mistake. Can you deny that I am hall-marked, that the fact of my parentage is written large in my flesh?" He felt her eyes fixed on him, painfully straining to see him through the rain and darkness; and, when she spoke again, he knew she knew that he did not lie. "But wasn't it wrong" she said. "I suppose so. Only as it gave me life and as I love life I'm hardly the person to deliver an unbiased opinion on that point." "Then you are not sad, you are not angry?" Damaris presently and rather unexpectedly asked. "Yes--at times both, but not often or for long together. As I tell you I love life--love it too well to torment myself much about the manner of my coming by it. It might show more refinement of feeling perhaps to hang my head and let a certain ugly word blast my prospects. But I don't happen to see the business that way. On the contrary I hope to get every ounce of advantage out of it I can--use it as a spur rather than a hobble. And I love my profession too. It gives you room and opportunity. I am waiting now for my first ship, my first command. That's a fine thing and a strong one. For your first ship is as a bride to you, and your first command makes you as a king among men. Oh! on a small scale I grant; but, as far as it reaches, your authority is absolute. On board your own ship you are master with a vengeance--if you like. And I do like."