“But the neglect is over—­indeed, it is over and utterly done with.”

And in the ardour of her disclaimer, Damaris pressed against Carteret, her face upturned and, since she too was tall, very close to his.

“Just because it is over and done with I begged you to bring me back with you to-night.  I wanted to make a clean break with all the frivolities, while everything was quite clear to me.  I wanted, while I still belonged to you, Colonel Sahib, through our so beautifully dancing together twice”—­

“God in Heaven!” Carteret said under his breath.  For what a past-master in the art of the torturer is your white souled maiden at moments!

“To go right away from all that rushing about worldliness—­I don’t blame Henrietta—­she has been sweet to me—­but it is worldliness, rather, isn’t it?—­and to be true to him again and true to myself.  I wanted to return to my allegiance.  You believe me, don’t you?  You made me see, Colonel Sahib, you brought my foolishness home to me—­Oh! yes, I owe you endless gratitude and thanks.  But I was uneasy already.  I needed a wholesome shove, and you gave it.  And now you deliver a much-needed supplementary shove—­one to my courage.  I obey you, Colonel Sahib, without question or reservation—­not on the chance of getting what I long for; but because you have convinced me of what is right.  I will tell him—­tell my father—­all about everything—­to-morrow.”

“It is now to-morrow—­and, with the night, many dreams have packed up their traps and fled.”

“But we needn’t be sorry for that,” Damaris declared, in prettily rising confidence.  “The truth is going to be better than the dreams, isn’t it?”

“For you, yes—­with all my heart, I hope.”

“But for you—­why not for you?” she cried, smitten by anxiety regarding him and by swift tenderness.

They had reached the end of the upward climbing path, and stepped from the semi-darkness of the wood into the greater clarity of the gravel terrace in front of the hotel.  Far below unseen waves again beat upon the beach.  The sound reached them faintly.  The dome of the sky, thick sown with stars, appeared prodigious in expanse and in height.  It dwarfed the block of hotel buildings upon the right.  Dwarfed all visible things, the whole earth, indeed, which it so sensibly enclosed.  Dwarfed also, and that to the point of desolation, the purposes and activities of individual human lives.  How could these count, what could they matter in presence of the countless worlds swinging, there, through the illimitable fields of space?

To Carteret this thought, or rather this sensation, of human insignificance brought a measure of stoic consolation.  He lifted Damaris’ hand off his arm, and held it, while he said, smiling at her: 

“For me—­yes, of course.  Why not?  For me too, dearest witch, truth is assuredly the most profitable bedfellow.”

Then, as she shrank, drawing away a little, startled by the crudeness of the expression: