It affected her with a desolating sadness as of failure; of great designs richly attempted but petering out into a pitiful nothingness; of love which aped and mimicked, being drained of all purpose and splendour of hot blood; of partings whose sorrow had lost its savour, yet which masqueraded in showy crape for a heart-break long grown stale and obsolete.
Her temperature rushed up; and she threw off the bedclothes, raising herself on her elbow, while the shafts of thin brightness wavered fitfully.

Through them she saw the photographs of her father step out of their frames again, and growing very tall and spare, stalk to and fro.
Other figures joined them--those of women.

Her poor dear Nannie, in the plain quaker-grey cotton gown and black silk apron she used to wear, even through the breathless hot-weather days, at the Sultan-i-bagh long ago.
And Henrietta Pereira, too, composed and delicately sprightly, arrayed in full flounced muslins and fine laces with an exquisiteness of high feminine grace and refinement which had enthralled her baby soul and senses, and, which held her captive by their charm even yet.

A handsome, high-coloured full-breasted, Eurasian girl, whom she but dimly recollected, was there as well.

And with these another--carrying very certainly no hint of things oriental about her--an English woman and of the people, in dull homely clothing, grave of aspect and of bearing; yet behind whose statuesque and sternly patient beauty a great flame seemed to quiver, offering sharp enough contrast to the frail glintings of the rain-washed sunset amid which she, just now, moved.
At sight of the last comer, Damaris started up, tense with wonder and excitement, since she knew--somehow--this final visitant belonged not to the past so much as to the present, that her power was unexhausted and would go forward to the shaping of the coming years.