That in speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her innocence of what is mean and mercenary, occurred to Damaris.
So she took her hands off his shoulders and clasped them in her lap.
Clasped them with all her poor strength, striving even in this extreme, to maintain some measure of calm and of dignity.

She must hold out, she told herself, just simply by force of will hold out, till she was away from him.

After that, chaos--for thoughts, discoveries, apprehensions of possibilities in human intercourse hitherto undreamed of, were marshalled round her in close formation shoulder to shoulder.

They only waited.

An instant's yielding on her part, and they would be on to her, crushing down and in, making her brain reel, her mind stagger under their stifling crowded assault.
"Go back and row," she said, at once imploring and imperious.