Thus far that relation showed a noble freedom from embarrassment. It
might have continued to do so but for a hazardous assumption on his part.
When first placing Damaris in the stern of the boat, the young man
stripped off his jacket and, regardless of her vaguely expressed protest,
wrapped it round her feet. It held the living warmth of his body; and,
chilled, dazed, and spent, as Damaris was, that warmth curiously soothed
her, until the ink-black boat floating upon the brimming, hardly less
inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together,
passing into a state more comparable to coma than to natural slumber, her
will in abeyance, thought and imagination borne under by the immensity of
her fatigue.
As Faircloth, meanwhile, pulled clear of the outstanding piles of the
jetty, he heard voices and saw lights moving down by the ferry on the
opposite shore. But these, and any invitation they might imply, he
ignored. If the hue and cry after Damaris, which he had prophesied, were
already afoot, he intended to keep clear of it, studiously to give it the
slip.
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