I want you to remember that, please. Tell me is it quite
clear to you?"
"Yes," Damaris said, "you have made it quite clear."
Yet for the first time he jarred on her, as with a more than superficial
difference of breeding and of class. This mention of money offended her
taste, seeming to lower the level upon which their extraordinary and--to
her--terrible conversation had thus far moved. It hurt her with another
kind of hurting--not magnificent, not absorbing, but just common. That in
speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his
own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her
innocence of what is mean and mercenary, occurred to Damaris.
So she took her hands off his shoulders and clasped them in her lap.
Clasped them with all her poor strength, striving even in this extreme,
to maintain some measure of calm and of dignity. She must hold out, she
told herself, just simply by force of will hold out, till she was away
from him. After that, chaos--for thoughts, discoveries, apprehensions of
possibilities in human intercourse hitherto undreamed of, were marshalled
round her in close formation shoulder to shoulder.
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