were--leaving the whole matter to one far stronger and more
competent than himself.

Whereupon he went back to bed; and slept profoundly, royally, until
Hordle the man-servant, moving about the bright chintz bedecked room,
preparing his bath and laying out his clothes, awoke him to the sweetness
of another summer day.

CHAPTER V

BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA

"We had a grand talk last night--Sir Charles was in splendid form. I
enjoyed it down to the ground."

Tom Verity lay, at full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of
sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness
joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to
vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such
prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious
idleness letting the earth cradle and the sun soak into him. Doubts and
disturbances of last night melted in daylight to an almost ludicrous
nothingness and self-confidence reigned; so that he declared the world a
super-excellent place, snapping his fingers at problems and mysteries. A
spark of curiosity pricked him still, it is true, concerning the origin
of certain undeniably queer aural phenomena. He meant to satisfy that
curiosity presently; but the subject must be approached with tact. He
must wait on opportunity.

A few paces from and above him, Damaris sat on the crown of the ridge,
where the light southerly wind, coming up now and again off the sea,
fanned her. A white knitted jersey, pulled on over her linen dress,
moulded the curve of her back, the round of her breasts and turn of her
waist, showing each movement of her gracious young body to the hips, as
she leaned forward, her knees drawn up and her feet planted among the
red, orange, and cream-grey flints and pebbles.

Looking up at her, Tom saw her face foreshortened in the shade of her
broad brimmed garden hat, a soft clear flush on it born of health, fresh
air and sunlight, her eyes shining, the blue of the open sea in their
luminous depths. He received a new impression of her. She belonged to the
morning, formed part of the gladness of universal Nature, an unfettered
nymph-like being. To-day her mood was sprightly, bidding farewell to
ceremony. Yet, he felt, she remained perplexing, because more detached
than is the feminine habit, poised and complete in herself.

And this detachment, this suppression of the sentimental or social
note--he being adm