For love of Damaris, his daughter, while still in the heat of his prime,
he had foresworn all traffic with women. Yet now, along with the tacitly
admitted claims of the son, arose the claim of the mistress, mother of
that son--in no sensual sort, but with a certain wildness of bygone
romance, wind and rain-swept, unsubstantial, dim and grey. Ever since
conviction of the extreme gravity of his physical condition dawned on
him, the idea of penetrating the courts of that deserted sanctuary had
been recurrent. In the summing up of his human, his earthly, experience,
romance deserved, surely, a word of farewell? Damaris' story served to
give the idea a fuller appeal and consistency.
But he was tired--tired. He longed simply to drift. It was infinitely
distasteful to him definitely to plan, or to decide respecting anything.
Meanwhile his continued silence and abstraction wore badly upon Damaris.
She had steeled herself; had flamed, greatly daring. Now reaction set in.
Her effort proved vain.
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