This meal, in fact, partaken of in the open, alone with Henrietta,
object of her childhood's idolatry--the first they had shared since
those remote and guileless years--assumed to Damaris a sacramental
character, though of the earthly and mundane rather than transcendental
kind. Its communion was one of good fellowship, of agreement in
cultivation of the lighter social side; which, upon our maiden's part,
implied tacit consent to conform to easier standards than those until
now regulating her thought and action, implied tacit acceptance of
Henrietta as example and as guide.
Whether the latter would have found cause for self-congratulation, could
she have fathomed the precise cause of this apparently speedy conquest
and speedy surrender, is doubtful; since it, in fact, took its rise less
in the fascination of devotion given, than in that of devotion denied.
She happened to be here on the spot at a critical juncture, and thus to
catch the young girl's heart on the rebound. That was all--that, joined
with Damaris' instinctive necessity to play fair and pay in honest coin
for every benefit received.
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