She remembered the nature of that charmingly pleasant something; yet
paused, before yielding it attention, held captive by the spectacle of
returning day.
It was early. The disc of the sun still below the horizon. But shafts of
light, striking up from it, patterned the underside of a vast dapple of
fleecy cloud--heliotrope upon the back-cloth of blue ether--with fringes
and bosses of scarlet flame. Against this, occupying the foreground, the
pine trees, which sheltered the terrace, showed up a deep greenish purple
bordering upon black.
Leaning out over the polished wooden bar--which topped the ironwork of
the window-guard--Damaris sought and gained sight of the sea. This,
darker even than the tufted foliation of the pines--since still untouched
by sunlight--spread dense and compact as molten metal, with here and
there a sheen, like that of the raven's wing, upon its corrugated
surface. To Damaris it appeared curiously forbidding. Seeing it thus she
felt, indeed, to have taken Nature unawares, surprised her without
disguise; so that for once she displayed her veritable face--a face not
yet made up and camouflaged to conceal the fact of its in-dwelling terror
from puny and defenceless man.
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