If outward aspects were thus calculated to engage her approval and agreeably fill in her projected picture, that which glimmered through them—divined by her rather than stated, all being necessarily more an affair of intuition than of knowledge—gave her pleasure of richer quality. High-tempered she unquestionably read him, arrogant and on occasion not inconceivably remorseless; but neither mean nor ungenerous, his energy unwasted, his mind untainted by self-indulgence. If he were capable of cruelty to others, he was at least equally capable of turning the knife on himself, cutting off or plucking out an offending member. This appealed to the heroic in her. While over her vision, as she thus considered him, hung the glamour of youth which, to youth, displays such royal enchantments—untrodden fields of hope and promise inviting the tread of eager feet, the rush of glorious goings forward towards conquests, towards wonders, well assured, yet to be. The personality of this man clearly admitted no denial, as little bragged as it apologized, since his candour matched his force of will.
Taking stock of him thus, from the corner of the sofa, imagination, intelligence, affections alike actively in play, Damaris' colour rose, her pulse quickened, and her great eyes grew wide, finely and softly gay.
Faircloth moved. Turned his head. Met her eyes, and looking into them his face blanched perceptibly under its couche of sunburn.
"Damaris," he said, "Damaris, what has happened?—Stop though, you needn't tell me. I know. We've found one another—haven't we?—Found one another more in the silence than in the talking.—Queer, things should work that way! But it puts a seal on fact. For they couldn't so work unless the same stuff, the same inclination, were embedded right in the very innermost substance of both of us. You look rested. You look glad—bless you.—Isn't that so?"
"Yes," she simply told him.
Faircloth set his elbows on his knees, his chin on his two hands, wrist against wrist, and his glance ranged out over the garden again, to the pale strip of the Bar spread between river and sea.
"Then I can go," he said, "but not because I've tired you."
"I shall never be tired any more from—from being with you."
"I don't fancy you will. All the same I must go, because my time's up. My train leaves Marychurch at six, and I have to call at the Inn, to bid my mother good-bye, on my way to the station."
Was the perfect harmony, the perfect adjustment of spirit to spirit a wee bit jarred, did a mist come up over the heavenly bright sky, Faircloth asked himself? And answered doggedly that, if it were so, he could not help it. For since, by all ruling of loyalty and dignity, the wall of partition was ordained to stand, wasn't it safer to remind both himself and Damaris, at times, of its presence? He must keep his feet on the floor, good God—keep them very squarely on the floor—for otherwise, wasn't it possible to conceive of their skirting the edge of unnamable abysses? In furtherance of that so necessary soberness of outlook he now went on speaking.