To Faircloth’s ruminative eyes, the paleness in the stern of the boat, indicating Damaris Verity’s drooping figure, altered slightly in outline.  Whereupon he shipped the oars skillfully and quietly, and going aft knelt down in front of her.  Her feet were stretched out as, bowed together, she sat on the low seat.  His jacket had slipped away exposing them to the weather, and the young man laying his hands on them felt them cold as in death.  He held them, chafed them, trying to restore some degree of circulation.  Finally, moved by a great upwelling of tenderness and of pity, and reckoning her, since she gave no sign, to be asleep, he bent down and put his lips to them.

But immediately the girl’s hands were upon his shoulders.

“What are you doing, oh! what are you doing?” she cried.

“Kissing your feet.”

Then the Devil, no doubt, flicking him, he let go restraint, disobeyed his own orders, raised his head, and looking at her as in the enfolding obscurity she leaned over him, said: 

“And, if it comes to that, who in all the round world has a better right than I, your brother, to kiss your feet?”

For some, to him, intolerable and interminable seconds, Faircloth waited after he had shot his bolt.  The water whispered and chuckled against the boat’s sides in lazy undertones, as it floated down the sluggish stream.  Beyond this there was neither sound nor movement.  More than ever might time be figured to stand still.  His companion’s hands continued to rest upon his shoulders.  Her ghostly, dimly discerned face was so near his own that he could feel, now and again, her breath upon his forehead; but she was silent.  As yet he did not repent of his cruelty.  The impulse which dictated it had not spent itself.  Nevertheless this suspense tried him.  He grew impatient.

“Damaris,” he said, at last, “speak to me.”

“How can I speak to you when I don’t understand,” she answered gravely.  “Either you lie—­which I should be sorry to accuse you of doing—­or you tell me a very terrible thing, if, that is, I at all comprehend what you say.—­Are you not the son of Mrs. Faircloth, who lives at the inn out by the black cottages?”

“Yes, Lesbia Faircloth is my mother.  And I ask for no better.  She has squandered love upon me—­squandered money, upon me too; but wisely and cleverly, with results.  Still—­” he paused—­“well, it takes two, doesn’t it, to make a man?  One isn’t one’s mother’s son only.”

“But Mrs. Faircloth is a widow,” Damaris reasoned, in wondering directness.  “I have heard people speak of her husband.  She was married.”

“But not to my father.  Do you ask for proofs—­just think a minute.  Whom did you mistake me for when I called you and came down over the Bar in the dusk?”

“No—­no—­” she protested trembling exceedingly.  “That is not possible.  How could such a thing happen?”

“As such things mostly do happen.  It is not the first case, nor will it by a long way, I reckon, be the last.  They were young, and—­mayn’t we allow—­they were beautiful.  That’s often a good deal to do with these accidents.  They met and, God help them, they loved.”