f a mile at least, so she judged, and
must turn her face eastward again and laboriously plough her way back.
But the return journey was crowned with no better success than the
outward one. Carefully, methodically she quartered the beach; but simply
her things weren't there, had vanished, leaving neither token or trace.

She was confronted moreover by the unpleasant fact that it grew late.
Soon the dusk would fall, its coming hastened by the mist, now settling
into a steady drizzle of rain precursor of a dark and early night. To
hunt any longer would be useless. She must give it up. Yet her maidenly
pride, her sense of what is seemly and becoming, revolted from exposing
herself to Timothy Proud's coarse leering glances or even--should he by
luck be her waterman--to Jennifer's more respectful curiosity,
dishevelled and but half-dressed as she was. And then the actual distance
to be traversed appeared to her dishearteningly great. For she was
weary--quite abominably weary now she came to think of it. Her feet were
bruised and blistered. They ached. Her throat ached too, and she
shivered. Cold, though it was, she must wait a minute or two and rest
before attempting the ascent of the slope.

Damaris sat down, pulling her skirts as low as they would come over her
bare legs, and clasping her hands round her knees, bowed, huddled
together to gain, if it might be, some sensation of warmth. For a little
she thought of that only--warmth--her mind otherwise a blank. But soon
the consuming sadness of the place in the waning light penetrated her
imagination, penetrated, indeed, her whole being. Only a few hours ago
she had danced here, in ecstasy born of the sunshine, the colour, the
apparently inexhaustible beauty of things uncreated by, and independent
of, the will and work of man. Contrast that scene, and the radiant
emotion evoked by it, with this? Which was real, the enduring revelation?
Was this truth; the other no more than mirage--an exquisite dissembling
and lovely lie?

Such thoughts are hardly wholesome at eighteen--hardly wholesome perhaps
at any age, if life is to be lived sweetly, with honest profit to one's
own soul and to the souls of others. Yet remembering back, down the dim
avenues of childhood, Damaris knew she did not formulate the question,
entertain the suspicion, for the first time. Only, until now, it had
stayed in the vague, a shapeless nightmare horror, past which she could
force herself to run with shut