TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED LADY OF HER INFANCY The windows of the sitting-room--upon the first floor of the long, three-storied, yellow-painted hotel--commanded a vast and glittering panorama of indented coast-line and purple sea.

Here and there, in the middle distance, little towns, pale-walled and glistering, climbed upward amid gardens and olive yards from the rocky shore.

Heathlands and pine groves covered the intervening headlands and steep valleys, save where meadows marked the course of some descending stream.

To the north-east, above dark wooded foot-hills, the flushed whiteness of snow-summits cut delicately into the solid blue of the sky.
Stretched upon the sun-faded, once scarlet cushions of the window-seat, Damaris absorbed her fill of light, and warmth, and colour.

Pleading imperative feminine mendings, she stayed at home this afternoon.