For man is never actually master of people or of things; but master, at most, of his own attitude towards them.

In this alone can he claim or exercise free-will.
Then--because general ideas, however inspiriting, are rather heavy diet for the young, immature minds growing quickly tired in the efforts to digest them--Damaris, having reached this happy, if partially erroneous, climax of emancipation, ceased to philosophize either consciously or unconsciously.

The russet moorland and spacious landscape shut the door on her, had no more to tell her, no more to say.

Or, to be strictly accurate, was it not rather perhaps that her power of response, power to interpret their speech and assimilate their message had reached its term?
All her life the maturity of her brain had inclined--rather fatiguingly--to outrun the maturity of her body, so that she failed "to continue in one stay" and trivial hours trod close on the heels of hours of exaltation and of insight.
With a sigh and a sense of loss--as though noble companions had withdrawn themselves from her--she gathered up the reins and sent the horse forward.

She fell into comfortable friendly conversation with the Napoleonic-countenanced Patch, moreover, consulting him as to the shortest way, through the purlieus of Stourmouth, into the Marychurch high road and so home to Deadham Hard.