During the above meditation, Henrietta continued to talk off the surface, her mind working on two distinct planes.  Damaris, off the surface, continued to answer her.

Our maiden felt tired both in body and in spirit.  She felt all “rubbed up the wrong way”—­disturbed, confused.  The many moral turns and twists of Henrietta’s conversation had been difficult to follow.  But from amid the curious maze of them, one thing stood out, arrestingly conspicuous—­Henrietta believed it then also.  Believed Carteret cared for her “in that way”—­thus, with a turning aside of the eyes and shrinking, she phrased it.  It wasn’t any mistaken, conceited imagination of her own since Henrietta so evidently shared it.  And Henrietta must be reckoned an expert in that line, having a triad of husbands to her credit—­a liberality of allowance in matrimony which had always appeared to Damaris as slightly excessive.  She had avoided dwelling upon this so outstanding feature of her friend’s career; but that it gave assurance of the latter’s ability to pronounce upon “caring in that way” was she now admitted incontestable.

Whether she really felt glad or sorry Henrietta’s expert opinion confirmed her own suspicions, Damaris could not tell.  It certainly tended to complicate the future; and for that she was sorry.  She would have liked to see the road clear before her—­anyhow for a time—­complications having been over numerous lately.  They were worrying.  They made her feel unsettled, unnatural.  In any case she trusted she shouldn’t suffer again from those odious yet alluring feelings which put her to such shame this morning.—­But—­unpleasant thought—­weren’t they, perhaps, an integral part of the whole agitating business of “caring in that way?”

Her eyes rested in wide meditative enquiry upon Henrietta, Henrietta sitting up in all her finished elegance upon the faded blue sofa and so diligently making company conversation.  Somehow, thus viewing her, it was extremely difficult to suppose Henrietta had ever experienced excited feelings.  Yet—­the wonder of it!—­she’d actually been married three times.

Then, wearily, Damaris made a return upon herself.  Yes—­she was glad, although it might seem ungrateful, disloyal, the man with the blue eyes had gone away.  For his going put off the necessity of knowing her own mind, excused her from making out exactly how she regarded him, thus relegating the day of fateful decision to a dim distance.  Henrietta accused him of being a sieve.—­Damaris grew heated in strenuous denial.  That was a calumny which she didn’t and wouldn’t credit.  Still you could never be quite sure about men—­so she went back on the old, sad, disquieting lesson.  Their way of looking at things, their angle of admitted obligation is so bewilderingly different!—­Oh! how thankful she was Aunt Felicia would soon be here.  Everything would grow simpler, easier to understand and to manage, more as it used to be, with dear Aunt Felicia here on the spot.