He went with them as far as the shoreward end of the up-sloping gangway.—­A tall grey-clad figure, with an equally tall blue-clad figure on the other side of the young girl’s, also tall, biscuit-coloured one,—­a dash of pink showing in her burnt-straw hat, pink too at her throat and waist seen between the open fronts of her dust-coat.—­But at the gangway he stopped.

“Dear witch,” he said, “I have some telegrams I should be glad to send off, and another small matter of business to transact in the town, so here, I will leave you, if you permit, in our friend’s safe-keeping”—­he smiled upon Faircloth.  “At the station, at five-thirty, we meet. Au revoir, then.”

And, without waiting for any reply, he sauntered away along the sun-flooded quay between piled up bales of merchandize, wine barrels, heaps of sand, heaps too of evilly smelling hides, towering cases and crates.  His shadow—­clear violet upon the grey of the granite—­from his feet onwards, travelled before him as he walked.  And this leading by, this following of, his own shadow, casual accident of light and of direction though in all common sense he must account it, troubled the peace of the man with the blue eyes, making him feel wistful, feel past the zenith of his allotted earthly achievement, queerly out of the running, aged and consequently depressed.

Upon Damaris the suddenness of his exit reacted in a sensation of constraint.  Carteret had been very exquisite to her throughout this delicate adventure, throughout these hours of restrained yet exalted emotion.  Left thus to her own resources she grew anxious, consciously diffident.  The, in a sense, abnormal element in her relation to Faircloth darted down on her, so that she could not but remember how slight, after all, was her actual acquaintance with him, how seldom—­only thrice in point of fact—­had he and she had speech of one another.

Upon Faircloth, Carteret’s withdrawal also reacted, though with different effect.  For an instant he watched the tall retreating form of this, as he perceived, very perfect gentleman.  Then he turned to Damaris, looking her over from head to heel, in keen somewhat possessive fashion.  And as, meeting his eyes, bravely if shyly, her colour deepened.

“You are happy?” he affirmed rather than asked.

“As the day is long,” she answered him steadily.

“But the day’s not been overlong, by chance, has it?”

“Not half long enough.”

“All’s well, then, still.”  He pressed her—­“You aren’t weary of me yet?”

Damaris reassuringly shook her head.

Nevertheless she was very sensible of change in the tenor of their intercourse, sensible of a just perceptible hardness in his bearing and aspect.  For some cause, the nature of which she failed to divine though she registered the fact of its existence, he no longer had complete faith in her, was no longer wholly at one with her in sympathy and in belief.  He needed wooing, handling.  And had she the knowledge and the art successfully to handle this sun-browned, golden-bearded, rather magnificent young master mariner—­out here in the open too, the shout of the great port in her ears, the dazzle of the water and the push of the warm wind upon her face?