One sees how it might very well come about." He took off his cap, and threw back his head looking up into the low wet sky.
"At night all cats are grey, aren't they," he went on, "little ones as well as big?
And it's close on night now, thanks to this dirty weather.
So close on it, that--though personally I'm in no hurry--I ought to get you back to The Hard, or there'll be a regular hue and cry after you--rightly and probably too, if your servants and people have any notion of their duty." "I am quite ready," Damaris said.
She strove to show a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with this masterful stranger--who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger.
Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability to deal with him.
"But hardly as you are," he commented, on her announcement she was ready.
"Let me help to put on your shoes and stockings for you first." And this he said so gently and courteously, that Damaris' lips began to quiver, very feminine and youthful shame at the indignity of her present plight laying hold on her.
"I can't find them," she pitifully declared.

"I have looked and looked, but I can't find them anywhere.

I left my things just here.

Can anyone have stolen them while I was out at the end of the Bar?
It is so mysterious and so dreadfully tiresome.

I should have gone home long ago, before the rain began, if I could have found them." And with that, the whole little story--childish or idyllic as you please--of sunshine and colour, of beguiling birds beguiling sea, of sleep, and uneasy awakening when the cloud-bank rising westward devoured the fair face of heaven, of mist and fruitless seeking, even some word of the fear which forever sits behind and peeps over the shoulder of all wonder and all beauty, got itself--not without eloquent passages--quickly yet gravely told.