Waylaying her in the hall, Mary had essayed to learn her programme, and
anchor her as to time and place by enquiring when and where tea should be
served. But Damaris put the kindly woman off.--She couldn't say
exactly--yet--would ring and let Mary know when she came in. If any one
called, she was not at home.
In truth her active young body asked for movement and exercise, while
scenes and phrases from the pages of Eoethen still filled her mind. She
longed for travel. Not via Marychurch to Harchester, well understood,
shepherded by Theresa Bilson, the members of the Deadham Church choir and
their supporters; but for travel upon the grand scale, with all its
romance and enlargement of experience, its possible dangers and certain
hardships, as the author of Eoethen had known it and her father, for that
matter, had known it in earlier days too. She suffered the spell of the
East--always haunting the chambers of her memory and ready to be stirred
in active ascendency, as by her morning's reading to-day--suffered the
spell not of its mysterious cities and civilizations alone, but of its
vast solitudes and silences, desert winds and desert sands.
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