So now, I had better bid you good-bye, I think, and leave you to rest." But Damaris, contriving to smile tremulous lips notwithstanding, shook her head.

For, in lifting her hand from his, she caught sight of the tattooed blue-and-crimson sea-bird and the initials below it.

And again her heart contracted with a spasm of tenderness; while those three letters, more fully arresting her attention, aroused in her a fascinated, half-shrinking curiosity.

What did they mean?
What could they stand for?
She longed intensely to know--sure they were in some sort a symbol, a token, not without special significance for herself.

But shyness and a quaint disposition, dating from her childhood, to pause and hover on the threshold of discovery, thus prolonging a period of entrancing, distracting suspense, withheld her.