ing of her
successive and frequently recurrent litters. She suckled, washed, played
with and educated those of her kittens who escaped the rigours of
stable-bucket and broom, until such time as they were three to four
months old. After which she sent them flying, amid cuffings and spittings
extraordinary, whenever they attempted to approach her; and, oblivious of
their orphaned and wistful existence, yielded herself with bewitching
vivacity, to fresh intrigues and amours new.

The long quiet morning indoors, with cats and books for company, at once
soothed Damaris and made her restless. After luncheon she put on hat,
gloves, and walking shoes, and went down across the lawn to the sea-wall.
Waylaying her in the hall, Mary had essayed to learn her programme, and
anchor her as to time and place by enquiring when and where tea should be
served. But Damaris put the kindly woman off.--She couldn't say
exactly--yet--would ring and let Mary know when she came in. If any one
called, she was not at home.

In truth her active young body asked for movement and exercise, while
scenes and phrases from the pages of Eoethen still filled her mind. She
longed for travel. Not via Marychurch to Harchester, well understood,
shepherded by Theresa Bilson, the members of the Deadham Church choir and
their supporters; but for travel upon the grand scale, with all its
romance and enlargement of experience, its possible dangers and certain
hardships, as the author of Eoethen had known it and her father, for that
matter, had known it in earlier days too. She suffered the spell of the
East--always haunting the chambers of her memory and ready to be stirred
in active ascendency, as by her morning's reading to-day--suffered the
spell not of its mysterious cities and civilizations alone, but of its
vast solitudes and silences, desert winds and desert sands.

And hence it came about that, as her mood of yesterday sent her inland to
pacify her imagination by gazing at the peaceful English country-side, so
her present mood sent her down to the shore to satisfy, or rather further
stimulate, her nostalgia for the East by gazing out to sea.

The cause in both cases was the same, namely, the inward tumult of her
awakening womanhood, and still more, perhaps, the tumult of awakening
talent which had not as yet found its appointed means of expression. She
was driven hither and thither by the push of her individuality to
disengage itself from adventitious sur