AN EXPERIMENT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING OF WHICH TIME ALONE CAN FIX THE VALUES Damaris lay on her side, her face turned to the wall.

When Charles Verity, quietly crossing the room, sat down in an easy chair, so placed at the head of the half-tester bed as to be screened from it by the dimity curtains, she sighed and slightly shifted her position.
Leaning back, he crossed his legs and let his chin drop on his breast.
He had barely glanced at her in passing, receiving a vague impression of the outline of her cheek, of her neck, and shoulders, of her head, dark against the dim whiteness on which it rested, and the long dark stream of her hair spread loose across the pillows.

He had no wish for recognition--not yet awhile.

On the contrary, it was a relief to have time in which silently to get accustomed to her presence, to steep himself in the thought of her, before speech should define the new element intruded, as he believed, into his and her relation.

Though little enough--too little, so said some of his critics--hampered by fear in any department, he consciously dreaded the smallest modification of that relation.