“Ah! there you rush too headlong to conclusions,” he reasoned, still with that same frankness of tone.  “She is an ingenious, unique creature, towards whom one’s sentiments are ingenious and unique in their turn.  I admire her, although—­for you are right there—­she is neither invariably trustworthy nor invariably kind.  Admire her ungrudgingly, now I no longer ask of her what she hasn’t it in her to give.  Limit your demand and you limit the risks of disappointment—­a piece of wisdom easier to enunciate than to apply.”

Lean, graceful, commanding under the cloak of his present gentle humour, Charles Verity sat down on the faded red cushion beside Damaris, and laid one arm along the window-ledge behind her.  He did not touch her; being careful in the matter of caresses, reverent of her person, chary of claiming parental privileges unasked.

“In the making of Henrietta Frayling,” he went on, “by some accident soul was left out.  She hasn’t any.  She does not know it.  Let us hope she never will know it, for it is too late now for the omission to be rectified.”

“Are you laughing at me?” Damaris asked, still stubborn, though his presence enclosed her with an at once assuaging and authoritative charm.

“Not in the least.  I speak that which I soberly believe.  Just as some ill-starred human creatures are born physically or mentally defective—­deformed or idiots—­so may they be born spiritually defective.  Why not?  My reason offers no scientific or moral objection to such a belief.  In other respects she is conspicuously perfect.  But, verily, she has no soul; and the qualities which—­for happiness or misery—­draw their life from the soul, she does not possess.  Therefore she sparkles, lovely and chill as frost.  Is as astute as she is cold at heart; and can, when it suits her purpose, be both false and cruel without any subsequent prickings of remorse.  But this very coldness and astuteness save her from misdeeds of the coarser kind.  Treacherous she has been, and, for aught I know, may on occasions still be.  But, though temptation has pretty freely crossed her path, she has never been other than virtuous.  She is a good woman—­in the accepted, the popular sense of the word.”

Silence stole down upon the room.  Damaris remained motionless, leaning forward gathered close into herself, her hands still heavy in her lap.  Could she accept this statement as comfort, or must she bow under it as rebuke?

“Why,” she asked at last huskily—­the tears were no longer upon her cheeks but queerly in her throat, impeding utterance, “do you tell me these things?”

“To prevent you beholding lying visions, my dear, or dreaming lying dreams of what might very well have been but—­God be thanked—­never has been—­never was.—­Think a minute—­remember—­look.”

And once more Damaris felt the breath of high romance and touched drama of rare quality, with those same two figures as protagonists, and that same Indian pleasure palace as their stage; but this time with a notable difference of sentiment and of result.