That their correspondence was no fictitious one, a freak of disordered nerves or imagination, but sane and actual, both brother and sister could convincingly have affirmed.  And this although time—­as time is usually figured—­had neither lot nor part in it.  Such projections of personality are best comparable, in this respect, to the dreams which seize us in the very act of waking—­vivid, coherent and complete, yet ended by the selfsame sound or touch by which they are evoked.

In Damaris’ case, before the scarlet, dyeing the cloud dapple, warmed to rose, or the dense metallic sea caught reflections of the sunrise, broadening incandescence, her errant consciousness was again cognizant of, subjected to, her immediate surroundings.  She was aware, moreover, that the morning sharpness began to take a too unwarrantable liberty with her thinly clad person for comfort.  She hastily locked the casements together; and then waited, somewhat dazed by the breathless pace of her strange and tender excursion, looking about her in happy amazement.

And, so doing, her eyes lighted upon a certain oblong parcel lying on her dressing-table.  There was the charmingly pleasant something which awaited her attention!  A present, and the most costly, the most enchanting one (save possibly the green jade elephant of her childish adoration) she had ever received!

She picked up, not only the precious parcel, but a hand-mirror lying near it; and, thus armed, bestowed herself, once more, in her still warm bed.

The last forty-eight hours had been fertile in experiences and in events, among which the arrival of this gift could by no means be accounted the least exciting.—­Hordle had brought the packet here to her, last night, about an hour after she and her father—­standing under the portico—­waved reluctant farewells to Colonel Carteret, as the hotel omnibus bore him and his baggage away to the station to catch the mail train through to Paris.  This parting, when it actually came about, proved more distressing than she had by any means prefigured.  She had no notion beforehand what a really dreadful business she would find it, after these months of close association, to say good-bye to the man with the blue eyes.

“We shall miss you at every turn, dear, dear Colonel Sahib,” she almost tearfully assured him.  “How we are going ever to live without you I don’t know.”

And impulsively, driven by the excess of her emotion to the point of forgetting accustomed habits and restraints, she put up her lips for a kiss.  Which, thus invited, kiss Carteret, taking her face in both hands for the minute, bestowed upon her forehead rather than upon those proffered lips.  Then his glance met Charles Verity’s, held it in silent interchange of friendship needing no words to declare its quality or depth; and he turned away abruptly, making for the inside of the waiting omnibus—­cavernous in the semi-darkness—­distributing largesse to all and sundry as he went.