“Go on loving it,” he bade her.—­And at once turned the conversation to other themes—­that of her father, Charles Verity among them, and the book on Afghanistan, the fair copy of the opening chapters of which was just completed.

Then, the stimulating, insistent vivacity of Paris going a little to Damaris’ head—­since urging, as always, to fullness of enterprise, fullness of endeavour, giving, as always, immense joy and value to the very fact of living—­she lamented the late development of her father’s literary genius.  A lament which called forth Carteret’s consolatory rejoinder, along with this—­to her—­cryptic assertion as to the thrice blessed state of the man whose harvest, when tardy, is of a description he need not scruple to reap.

“Why,” she asked herself, “should he have said that unless with reference to himself.  Reference to some private harvest which he himself scrupled to reap?”

Damaris slipped her feet from the cushioned window-seat to the floor, and stooping down recovered her fallen black silk stocking.  She felt disturbed, slightly conscience-stricken.  For it had never occurred to her, strong, able, serene of humour and of countenance as he was, that the “man with the blue eyes” could have personal worries, things—­as she put it—­he wanted yet doubted whether he ought to have.  Surely his unfailing helpfulness and sympathy gave him the right, in fee-simple, to anything and everything he might happen to covet.  That he should covet what was wrong, what was selfish, detrimental to others, seemed incredible.  And the generous pity of her youthful tenderness, her impatience of all privation, all disappointment or denial for those she held in affection, overflowed in her.  She longed to do whatever would greatly please him, to procure for him whatever he wanted.  Wouldn’t it be delicious to do that—­if she could only find out!

But this last brought her up against a disquieting lesson lately learned.—­Namely, against recognition of how very far the lives of men—­even those we know most dearly and closely—­and the lives of us women are really apart.  She thought of her father and Darcy Faircloth and their entirely unsuspected relation.  This dulled the edge of her enthusiasm.  For wasn’t it only too probably the same with them all?  Loyalty compelled the question.  Had not every man a secret, or secrets, only penetrable, both for his peace of mind and for your own, at considerable risk?

Damaris planted her elbows on the window-sill, her chin in the hollow of her hands.  Her eyes were solemn, her face grave with thought.—­Verily the increase of knowledge is the increase of perplexity, if not of actual sorrow.  Even the apparently safest and straightest paths are beset with “pitfall and with gin” for whoso studies to pursue truth and refuse subscription to illusion.  Your charity should be wide as the world towards others.  Towards yourself narrow as a hair, lest you condone your own