eyes. It didn't jump out of the vague,
thank goodness, and bar her passage. But now no running or shutting of
eyes availed. It had jumped out. She stared at it, and, in all its
undermining power of discouragement, it stared back.--What if the deepest
thing, the thing which alone lasted, the thing which, therefore, you
were bound in the end to accept, to submit to, was just darkness, sorrow,
loneliness of worn body and shrinking spirit, by the shore of a cold,
dumb, and tenantless, limitless sea--what then?

From which undesirable abyss of speculation she was aroused by the sound
of her own name--"Damaris Verity, hey--Damaris Verity"--shouted, not
roughly though in tones of urgent command, from above and behind her on
the crest of the Bar. Along with it came the rattle of shifting shingle
under a strong active tread.

Hearing which the young girl's senses and faculties alike sprang to
attention. She rose from her dejected attitude, stood up and faced round,
forgetful of aches and weariness and of woeful ultimate questionings,
while in glad surprise her heart went out to meet and welcome the--to
her--best beloved being in this, no longer, sorry world.

For even thus, at some fifty yards distant through the blur of falling
rain, the figure presented to her gaze, in height, build, and fashion of
moving, was delightfully familiar, as were the tones of the voice which
had hailed her--if in not quite equal degree the manner of that hail.
Some change in his plans must have taken place, or some letter miscarried
advising her of her father's earlier return. Finding her out he had come
to look for her.--This was perfectly as it should be. Had Colonel
Carteret come home with him, she wondered. And then there flashed through
her, with a singular vividness, recollection of another, long, long ago
escapade--when as a still almost baby child she had stepped off alone, in
daring experiment, and fallen asleep, in the open as to-day. But in
surroundings how amazingly different!--A place of fountains, cypresses
and palms, she curled up in a black marble chair, set throne fashion,
upon a platform of blood red sandstone, an age-old Oriental garden
outstretched below. Colonel Carteret--"the man with the blue eyes" as she
always had called him--awakened her, bringing an adorable and, as it
proved in the sequel, a tragic birthday gift.--Tragic because to it
might, actually if indirectly, be traced the breaking up of her
childhood's home in th