did
she recoil from any sort of association with foul old Timothy Proud.

Therefore she went up across the moist gleaming levels to the
tide-line, and picking her way carefully among the black jumble of
seaweed and sea-litter which marked it, sat down in a fan-shaped
depression in the dry, clean, blown sand some few paces above. The
sunshine covered it making it warm to her bare feet. The feel and blond
colour of it brought to mind her reading of this morning--a passage in
Eoethen telling of the striking of camp at dawn, the desert waiting to
claim its own again and obliterate, with a single gesture, all sign or
token of the passing sojourn of man. Clasping her hands behind her
head, Damaris lay back, the warm sand all around her, giving beneath
her weight, fitted itself into the curves of her body and limbs--only
it visible and the soft blue of the sky above. For a little while she
rested open-eyed in the bright silent stillness, and then, unknowing of
the exact moment of surrender, she stretched with a fluttering sigh,
turned on her side and dreamlessly slept.

And, while she thus slept, two events took place eminently germane to the
further unfolding of this history.--The weather changed, and the local
degenerate, Abram Sclanders' half-idiot son--the poor "lippity-lop" who,
according to Jennifer, had far better been "put away quiet-like at
birth"--committed theft.

Of the first event, Damaris gradually became sensible, before her actual
awakening. She grew restless, her bed of sand seeming robbed of comfort,
bleak and uneasy, so that she started up, presently, into a sitting
position, rubbing her eyes with her fists baby-fashion, unable for the
minute to imagine how or why she came to be lying like this out on the
Bar, hatless, shoe and stockingless. Looking about her, still in
questioning bewilderment, she observed that in the south-west a great
bank of cloud had risen. It blotted out the sun, deadening all colour.
The opaline haze, turned to a dull falling mist, closed down and in,
covering the sand-hills and the dark mass of Stone Horse Head and even
blurring the long straight lines of the sandbank and nearer shingle. The
sea had risen, but noiselessly, creeping up and up towards her, no line
of white marking the edge of its slothful oncoming.

Damaris stood up, pulling her white jersey--the surface of it already
furred with moisture--low over her hips. For she felt shivery, and the
air was thick and chill to