She had the misfortune, moreover, to tread on the top end of a razor shell, buried upright, which cut the skin making her limp from pain and sharpness of smarting.

So perforce, she took to the deep blown sand again above high-water mark, and ploughed along slowly enough in growing weariness and discomfort.
Never, surely, was any half-mile so long as this between the place of her farewell to the mottled stilt-legged birds and subsequent sleeping, and the place where she left her hat and shoes and stockings! In the dimness and chill of the falling mist, it seemed to lengthen and lengthen to an altogether incomprehensible extent.

Time and again she stopped and scanned the ground immediately before her, certain she should see there those so lightly discarded and now so earnestly desired items of clothing.

Once in possession of them she would simply scurry home.

For visions of warm, dry pretty garments, of Mary's, comely ministering presence, of tea, of lamp-light and--yes, she would allow herself that culminating luxury--of a fine log fire in the long sitting-room, presented themselves to her imagination in most alluring sequence--the spirit of adventure, meanwhile, as must be owned, beginning to sing small and hang a diminished head.
But on a sudden, raising her eyes from their persistent search, Damaris realized she must have missed and already passed the spot.