After a space of silence, wherein the pines, lightly stirred by some fugitive up-draught off the sea, murmured dusky secrets in the vault of interlacing branches overhead, Carteret spoke again.  He had his voice under control now.  Yet, to Damaris’ hearing, his utterance was permeated by an urgency and gravity almost awe-inspiring, here in the loneliness and obscurity of the wood.  She went in sudden questioning, incomprehensible fear of the dear man with the blue eyes.  His arm was steady beneath her hand, supporting her.  His care and protection sensibly encircled her, yet he seemed to her thousands of miles away, speaking from out some depth of knowledge and of reality which hopelessly transcended her experience.  She felt strangely diffident, strangely ignorant.  Felt, though she had no name for it, the mystical empire, mystical terror of sex as sex.

“The night of the breaking of the monsoon, of those riotings and fires at Bhutpur, your father bartered his birthright, in a certain particular, against your restoration to health.  The exact nature of that renunciation I cannot explain to you.  The whole transaction lies beyond the range of ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental—­or the superstitious, if you please to take it that way.  But call it by what name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death worked, apparently.  For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear witch—­thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your father attempted to buy with this act of personal sacrifice.  He was willing to pay a price most men would consider prohibitive to secure your recovery.  And, with an unswerving sense of honour, he has gone on paying, until that which, at the start, must have amounted to pretty severe discipline has crystallized into habit.  What you tell me of this young man, Darcy Faircloth’s history, goes, indirectly, to strengthen my admiration for your father’s self-denying ordinance, both in proposing and in maintaining this strange payment.”

There—­it was finished, his special pleading.  Carteret felt unfeignedly glad.  He was unaccustomed to put forth such elaborate expositions, more particularly of a delicate nature and therefore offering much to avoid as well as much to state.

“So you are bound to play a straight game with him—­dear child.  Believe me he deserves it, is finely worthy of it.  Be open with him.  Show him your letter.  Ask his permission—­if you have sufficient courage.  Your courage is the measure of the sincerity of your desire in this business.  Do you follow me?”

“Yes—­but I shall distress him,” Damaris mournfully argued.

She was bewildered, and in her bewilderment held to the immediate and obvious.

“Less than by shutting him out from your confidence, by keeping him at arm’s length.”

“Neglecting him?”

“Ah! so that rankles still, does it?  Yes, neglecting him just a trifle, perhaps.”