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 admittedly a very personable fellow--piqued Tom's male
vanity, so that he rallied her with:

"But by the way, why did you vanish so early, why didn't you stay with us
after dinner last night?"

"I did not want to vanish," she answered. "Nothing is more delightful
than hearing my father talk. But had I stayed Miss Bilson would have
supposed herself free to stay too, and that would have spoiled the
evening. My father doesn't choose to talk freely before Miss Bilson,
because she gets into a foolish excited state and interrupts and asks
questions. She overflows with admiration and that annoys and bores him."

"'She brought him butter in a lordly dish,'" Tom quoted. "The ill-advised
Bilson. Can't one just see her!"

"And it is not her place to admire out loud," Damaris continued. "Over
and over again I have tried to explain that to her. But in some ways, she