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.

The door opened, closed, and, after a minute’s pause, one of the two men—­Damaris did not know which, she could not bring herself to look—­coming from between the stumpy pillars walked towards her down the half-length of the room; and bent over her, resting one hand on the back of her chair, the other on the leather inlay of the writing-table just beside the little pile of house-books.

The hand was young, sunburnt, well-shaped, the finger nails well kept.  Across the back of it a small-bodied, wide-winged sea-bird, in apparent act of flight, and the letters D.V.F. were tattooed in blue and crimson.  A gold bangle, the surface of it dented in places and engraved with Japanese characters, encircled the fine lean wrist.  These Damaris saw, and they worked upon her strangely, awakening an emotion of almost painful tenderness, as at sight of decorations pathetically fond, playfully child-like and ingenuous.  While, as he bent over her, she also became aware of a freshness, a salt sweetness as of the ocean and the great vacant spaces where all the winds of the world blow keen and free.