Captivity

Once more came peace, so sunlit and tender that it seemed as though they had wandered into a valley of Avilion where even the echoes of storms could not come, and doves brooded softly. They talked sometimes now of the coming of their son; Louis, once he had got over his conventional horror of such a proceeding, said that she would be as safe in Mrs. Twist's care, with him hovering in the background, as though she had gone to the nursing home in Sydney, as he had suggested at first.

"I shall funk awfully to know you're going through it, old lady," he told her. "You know nothing about it yet. I've seen this thing happen dozens of times, and it's much worse than you imagine."

She decided, privately, to spare him the misery of it all by sending him off into the Bush on an errand for Mr. Twist as soon as she was taken ill. But her scheme fell through. All one day of blue and silver in June, a winter's day with keen exhilaration in the air, she stayed with him in the clearing, burning the branches as he hewed them down. She felt scarcely alive. Her body was a queer, heavy, racked and apprehensive thing down on the ground. She watched it slowly walking about, dragging faggots of gorse fastened together by the swag-straps which she loosened as she cast the branches cracking and creaking into the flames. Her mind was restless, a little fey. Louis, seeing something of her uncertainty, stopped work early, and they walked home slowly over the cleared land that was now being ploughed.

"I feel proud of it, don't you?" she said, looking back. He nodded, watching her anxiously.

As she was making the tea pain, quite unbearable, seized her. She got out on the verandah so that he should not see her. After a while it passed and, looking white, she came back into the room.

"I was going across to the Homestead to-night. Jerry's got a new record and wants to try it on us. But I feel tired. Will you ask Mrs. Twist to come and have a gossip?" she said casually.

The pain came back, quite astonishing her. She had heard that it was horrible, but had not expected it to be quite so horrible as this. Her mind had only room for one thought—that Louis must not suspect—or, in his anxiety; he would lose grip on himself and make away for Cook's Wall and oblivion. Going into her bedroom she took pencil and paper and wrote a note to Mrs. Twist, who understood the plot and was ready to invent some lost sheep for Jerry and Louis to hunt up.

"Can you come up? I think it's happening to me. Please send Louis away," she wrote, and folded the note into an envelope which she fastened down. That moment she found herself crying out without her own volition. She slammed the door and lay down on the floor inside it, to barricade it against Louis. She heard his steps coming along the verandah and clenched her hands fiercely over her mouth.

"Did you cry out then, dear?" came his voice as he pushed at the door. Feeling an obstruction he pushed all the harder: she could not speak, but he took in at a glance her twisted figure and as he bent over her, shaking with fright, she caught at his hands.

"I thought I'd do it all by myself, but I can't bear it," she gasped.

"Oh my darling," he cried, lifting her in his arms and holding her tight. "How long has this been going on?"

It was some time before she was able to speak. In the bleak aloneness of pain she was very glad of his presence.

"All day—only I didn't want you to know," she said. He groaned.

"For fear it'd bowl me over? Oh God—"

"I'd a plot to send you away. But I'll be glad to know you're not very far! Will you go for Mrs. Twist, Louis? It will be back in a minute."

Kissing her, he ran out across the paddock. In that moment he felt he would cheerfully die for her; it was not her illness that made him so tender, so unusually exalted. He had not it in his nature to regard pain as other than interesting. But the rending thought that she had suffered alone rather than risk his getting drunk—that jerked him. He felt he could beat any weakness that night, as he recalled her eyes, trying to smile at him through pain, her hands as they clung to his for help. He lived a thousand lives during the next few hours until, at two o'clock, he heard the heart-stopping cry of a newborn child that brought stuffy London nights in the slums back to his mind for an instant until Mrs. Twist said, with an air of personal pride, that it was a boy.

And then Louis cracked again; kneeling beside Marcella, who was quite calm and very tired, he sobbed out his love and his penitence and his stern and frantic resolves for the future, his undying intention to be as good a man as she was until Mrs. Twist, who was not very used to emotional young men, packed him out of the way to take the news to Mr. Twist, who was sitting up waiting for it.

The two women had never told Mr. Twist of Louis's tragedy. He had guessed that he had been "on the shikker" that week he stayed away, but he took that as the ordinary thing done by ordinary men—he himself was past "having a burst," he had no heart for it now; but no young man was any the worse for it if it didn't take hold of him. And so, when Louis went there with his eyes shining, his hair wild and his hands shaking, he brought out a bottle of brandy.

"We must drink the young fellow's health," said Mr. Twist, pouring out a microscopic dose for himself and passing the bottle to Louis. "I got that bottle a bit ago, as soon as mother told me your missus was like that. You never know when a drop of brandy may save life."

Louis refused the drink, but Mr. Twist laughed at him—and Louis could not bear to be laughed at. He too poured a microscopic dose, and they solemnly toasted the unnamed son. Louis was fidgety, anxious to get back.

"Leave them alone—they're better alone for a bit. All sorts of things to see to," said the man who had weathered seven birthdays. "Have a pipe with me."

They smoked; Mr. Twist talked. Louis answered vaguely, his mind with Marcella; he had suddenly determined that he could not keep his son, as well as his wife, chained in the Bush with him. Visions of the boy growing up—going to school—going to the hospital to do what his father had failed to do—floated before him. He was making titanic resolutions for the future. His eyes strayed past the brandy bottle. Mr. Twist pushed it generously forward.

"Have another dose. You need it, lad," he said. Louis stood up, astonishing Mr. Twist. He was trembling violently, his forehead wet and shining, his eyes wild.

"Put the damned stuff in the fire!" he cried, and dashed off over the paddock as though a pack of devils was after him. It was an epoch; it was the first time he had refused a drink.

Marcella lay afloat on a warm, buoyant sea of enchantment, her eyes closed; life seemed in suspension; she had never, in her life, known pain of any severity until a few hours before; it had appalled, astonished her. She felt it unfair that a body which could quiver to the swift tingle of frosty mornings on the hills, the buffetings and dashings of the North Sea waves, the still glamour of an aurora evening on a house-top, and the inarticulate ecstasy of love, should be so racked. But as she put out her hand across the bed and felt the faint stirrings of the child at her side she forgot those few nightmare hours as a saint, bowing his head for his golden crown at the hands of his Lord, must forget the flames of the stake, the hot reek from the lion's slavering jaws. She looked across to Louis, who was sleeping heavily in his hammock; he had found time to tell her that, for the first time, he had held temptation literally in his hand and been able to conquer it. And she felt that Castle Lashcairn was not big enough to hold all the kindliness and happiness that seemed to be focussing upon it from all the round horizon. Faith in the logical inevitability of good had changed to certainty: it seemed to her, now, that faith was only an old coward afraid to face fact. She was looking at the world from her mountaintop that night; it seemed to her that it could never be the same again for anyone in it, since she herself felt so different, so exalted.

The next two days brought complications. When Louis, coming in at noon, all smelling of sunshine and wind and smoke, kneeled beside the bed for a moment and, peeping underneath the folded sheet at the pink, screwed-up face of his son, happened to touch her breast with his hand, she was bathed in a sea of pain. Later in the day Mrs. Twist said he would have to go to the township to get a feeding-bottle for the baby; he was inclined to dispute the necessity for it, but he set off at once, for the child, fed with sugar and water in a spoon, kept up a dissatisfied wailing. Marcella forgot to be anxious about him, so completely had she sponged fear from her mind. When, at breakfast-time next morning, Jerry came in with the bottle, she guessed that Louis was washing off the dust of his swift travel before he came to see her. In the absorption of feeding the child and talking to Mrs. Twist she almost forgot him; it was nightfall next day before she saw him, and then he looked haggard and pinched, and she was almost frantic with fear; when he was away from her she never thought he was drunk; always she thought he had met with an accident. He told her, between sobs and writhings, that once again he had failed, but he had been too ashamed to come to her until he had slept off some of the traces of his failure. Seeing him buying a baby's bottle at the store the men of the township had chaffed him into "wetting the baby's head," and he had forgotten his recent victory, his adoring love, his fierce resolves, and the little hungry thing waiting to be fed. Once again she felt stunned, incredulous; later, when she was up again and going about the cottage and Homestead, she determinedly forgot. His passionate struggles made it impossible to feel resentment against him, however much he made her suffer. Always she was sure this particular time was the last time; always she thought Louis, like Andrew, had been going along the Damascus road and had seen a great light.

And so, for two years, they lived on at Castle Lashcairn; for long days sometimes Louis went off to Cook's Wall, and she despaired. Most of the time she hoped blindly. Much of the time they were incredibly happy in small things. Some slight measure of prosperity came to Loose End. The uncle who used to send the gramophone records retired from business and, buying himself an annuity, divided his money between his few relatives so that he could see what they did with it before he died. Quite a respectable flock of sheep came to take the place of those drowned in the flood and burnt in the fire; a horse and buggy went to and fro between Loose End and the station; Scottie the collie got busy and two shepherds came, building another hut at the other side of the run. A plague of rabbits showed Mr. Twist the folly of putting off the construction of rabbit-proof fencing any longer, now that he could afford it, and the gorse was once more left uncleared for months in the pressure of new things. Neighbours came, too—the deposit of manganese at Cook's Wall was found cropping up on the extreme borders of Gaynor's run, and a tiny mining township called Klondyke settled itself round the excavations five miles from the Homestead. Marcella made friends with everyone, to Louis's amazement. To him friendliness was only possible when whisky had taken away his self-consciousness; the parties of miscellaneous folks who turned up on Sundays, bringing their own food, as is the way in the Bush where the nearest store is often fifty miles away, worried him at first. He stammered and was awkward and ungracious with them, but Marcella, dimly realizing that it must be bad for him to be drawn in so much upon their égoïsme à deux, tried to make him more sociable. When he forgot himself and was effortlessly hospitable, he was charming. When he felt shy and frightened, and was fighting one of his rhythmical fits of desire, he was difficult and rude.

Aunt Janet wrote every month: her letters varied little; they were cynical though kindly; especially was she cynical about Louis, for, though Marcella told her nothing about him, she guessed much from the girl's description of their life. She was very cynical about Marcella's breathless descriptions of her happiness: she was frankly despondent about young Andrew, who, as yet, showed no signs of fulfilling her gloomy predictions.

Dr. Angus wrote every mail. Though a world apart, he and Marcella seemed to get closer together. He was growing younger with age, and she older. He told her he had no friend but her letters, and wrote, sometimes thirty pages of his small, neat handwriting to her—all about his cases, his thoughts, his reading. And every book he bought he passed on to her. Louis had had to put up three more shelves for them.

"I've been unduly extravagant, Mrs. Marcella," he wrote once, at the end of the second year. "I've left the rheumaticky old woman to a sort of patent rubbing oil very much in vogue just now, and I've resigned the coming babies to the midwife at Carlossie, and been to Kraill's Lendicott Trust lectures at Edinburgh. He seems, in my humble and very uninstructed opinion, to have gone very far since 'Questing Cells.' The lectures were on sex psychology. He admits that they are coloured by what he learnt at Heidelberg last year. But he goes further than Germans could possibly go. There's a gentleness, a humanity about him, and a spirituality one doesn't expect from the author of 'Questing Cells' or from those Lendicott lectures a few years ago. The thing that struck me about him is that he's so consummately wise—wise enough, Mrs. Marcella, to grasp at the significance of an amoeba as well as that of the Lord of Hosts! I'm a small man—a little G.P. in an obscure Highland village in rather shabby tweed knickerbockers and Inverness cape (yes, the same ones—still no new clothes! What would be the use in wasting money on adorning an old ruffian like me?) But I went up to him, sort of shaking at the knees, after the second lecture, and discussed a point with him. The point was not what I was wanting to know about. I was wanting, very much, to have a 'bit crack' with him, as they call it here. Lassie, he asked me to lunch with him the next day, and he talked to me as if I was his long-lost brother. In fact, he seems to think that everybody is! He came off the rostrum completely. Even when he's lecturing he seems to be talking to you personally, with an engaging sort of friendliness. He puts me a good bit in mind of Professor Craigie when I was a lad. I felt as if I was a baby in arms beside him, but he seemed as pleased to see me as I was to see him. No, he hasn't got a long white beard, and he doesn't look a bit like Ruskin or Tennyson or Dickens. Do you remember when you said you thought he had bushy eyebrows and a white beard, years ago? He's not above forty-five, I should say; but I'm no judge of age after folks are forty, I'm so afraid of putting my foot in it. He's much bigger than me (I'm talking about appearance now). He gives one the impression of quick blue eyes. I can't remember any more about him; I remember every word he said, but not how he looked when he said it. And now I suppose you want to know all he said; you have an Examining Board's thirst for information, Mrs. Marcella! But I'm sending you the printed lectures and some news. He told me he's going to Harvard this year. In fact, he's there now; and after that he's on his way to Australia. I gather that you're a wandering Jew's journey from Sydney, but wouldn't it be worth your while to take that man of yours and go to hear him? It isn't often one gets a chance of seeing in the flesh someone who has got into your imagination as Kraill got into yours and mine. I'd walk all the way from Carlossie to Edinburgh to hear him again. It makes me sad, sometimes, to think how little chance we doctors in practice, with all our responsibilities and opportunities, have of getting this heaping up of wisdom that comes to men like Kraill. Measles and rheumatics, confinements and bronchitis take up all our time, and when we get a man like poor Andrew your father, something out of the ordinary, appealing to us for healing, we give him digitalis or Epsom-salts for the elixir of life. We do our best, but it's bad—very bad. When I talked to Kraill that day I kept thinking of your father. I kept thinking he'd have been alive to-day if he could have caught on to Kraill's philosophy. I feel small, Marcella. I honestly hadn't the brains, the knowledge, to do anything for your father. I talked to Kraill about it. He said something very kind and very queer about the socialization of knowledge. I didn't quite catch on to it at the time, but thinking it out afterwards it seemed to me that he meant knowledge was not to be a Holy of Holies sort of thing, a jealous mystery, an aristocratic thing, any more; but be spread broadcast, so that everyone could have wisdom and healing and clear thinking. And after all, isn't healing, more than anything else, merely clear thinking? I hate the waste of people, you know. I hate that people should rot and die. I feel personally affronted when I think about your father, and some days—I strongly suspect it's when my liver's out of order—I worry about your young son. But by the time he's grown up maybe Kraill's socialization of knowledge will have begun."

Marcella was having an argument with Mrs. Beeton that day when Jerry brought the letter in. Mrs. Beeton seemed to think it was necessary to have an oven, a pastry board, a roller and various ingredients before one could attempt jam tarts. Marcella felt that a mixture of flour, fruit salt, and water baked in the clay oven heaped over with blazing wood ought to beat Mrs. Beeton at her own game. She and young Andrew, both covered in flour because he loved to smack his hands in it and watch it rise round them in curly white clouds were watching beside the fire for the sticks to burn down. When she read the doctor's letter she sat down immediately to write to him. She knew so well that sense of inadequacy that trying to help Louis always gave her, and she wanted to cure him of it. The jam tarts got burned; she forgot about them. It was only when she remembered that the letter could not go to the post for three days that she decided to write it again at greater leisure.

The two years had aged Marcella; the doctor's letters were manna in the desert to her spirit, his books the only paths out of the hard, tough life of everyday. Sometimes she felt tempted to take the cheap thrills of purely physical existence with Louis as she realized more and more that, though his schooled and trained brain was a better machine than hers, his soul was a weak plant requiring constant cossetting and feeding while his body was the unreasoning, struggling home of appetites. She had the torturing hopefulness that comes from alternating failure and success in a dear project; she was getting just a little cynical about him; her clear brain saw that she was his mother, his nurse and, perhaps, his mistress. He loved her. She knew that quite well. But he loved her as so many Christians love Christ—"because He died for us." His love was unadulterated selfishness even though it was the terribly pathetic selfishness of a weak thing seeking prop and salvation. She faced quite starkly the fact that her love was a love of giving always, receiving never; also she faced the fact that she must kill every weakness in herself, for, by letting him see her hardness, she gave him something to imitate. Hunger of soul, the black depression that comes to a Kelt like a breath from the grave, weariness of body must all be borne gallantly lest he be "raked up." Once or twice, when Louis had slipped and failed and was fighting himself back again, she felt that she was getting bankrupt. One could never treat Louis by rule of thumb. He might get drunk if she inadvertently spoke coolly to him. Then he would get drunk out of pique. He might get drunk if she had been especially loving. Then it would be because he was happy and wanted to celebrate; if she were ill he would get drunk to drown his anxiety: if she got better, he would drink to show his relief; if she died, he would drown his grief. Sometimes she felt that it was quite impossible to safeguard him: she literally had not the knowledge. Such knowledge was locked away in a few wise brains like Kraill's—and meanwhile people were rotting. Once she wrote a long letter to Carnegie asking him to stop giving money for libraries and spend some on helping to cure neurotics. But she destroyed the letter, and went on hoping. Sometimes she felt that her body would either get out of hand as Louis's did, or else crack under the strain put upon it by her temperament, Louis and her work. Sometimes she thought her capacity for happiness would atrophy and drop off if she so defiantly kept it pushed into a dark corner of her being every time it protested to her that it was being starved. Sometimes she hoped that the time would come quickly when she would have killed desire for everything as Aunt Janet had done, and would be going about the world a thing stuffed with cotton-wool, armoured in cotton-wool. And all the time she was fighting the insidious temptation to kill the unconscious aristocracy of her that had, after the first few weeks in Sydney, set a barrier between her and Louis—a barrier of which he was never once conscious. Other people, on a lower range of life, seemed quite happy with a few thunder flashes of passion in a grey sky. Louis did. Except when the end of the month brought pay day, and set him itching to be off to the township, he seemed happy. At these times she deliberately made love to him to hold him from the whisky, loathing the deliberateness and expediency of a thing which, it seemed to her, ought to be a spontaneous swelling of a wave until it burst overwhelmingly. She did not realize until long afterwards what good discipline this was, as her brain and spirit refused to follow her body along a meaner path. Louis never guessed how she thought out calmly whether to be hurt or not by him, and decided that it was better to be a wounded thing hiding her wounds under a coat of mail, rather than a dead thing in mummy-wrappings, in cotton-wool.

But the doctor's letter generated hope. She respected the doctor's opinion. For him to be enthusiastic about anyone was very wonderful; there was something wistful and very beautiful in this deferring of an old man to one much younger, something very touching in his frank pride in the big man's friendliness. Always Kraill had been a hero to her, since the days when his cynical early book of lectures had come like revelation to her, even though she had had to take the help of a dictionary on every line. That evening Louis went off to the township after three days' restless nerviness on his part, and three nights' valiant love-making on hers. Taking young Andrew she went down by the lake and leaving him to splash joyously in the ripples at the edge, she read the last lectures.

She read for an hour, gorging the book as a child gobbling sweets before his nurse's return. She was devouring understanding—it seemed to her that the lectures were being written expressly for her. It seemed, with one half of Kraill's wisdom she could save Louis. The child got hungry and she fetched milk and biscuit for him. His crawler was soaked by the water in which he lived half his life. She changed it in a dream and took him back to the lake again, where the shadows were getting long and cool. It was possible to think with detachment there, in the serenity of the evening.

She saw, as she usually saw things, very clear and stark, that all through she had been wrong about Louis. Once only she had come within touching distance of the right, when on the Oriana she had told him that his only hope was to throw up the sponge, as people say—acknowledge himself beat to the earth as Saul of Tarsus had done on the Damascus Road. Andrew Lashcairn had done it that night with the little pale cousin; he had made himself "at one with God": fighting and struggling had ceased; his life, a battle-ground of warring forces, had become, in a mighty flash of understanding, the chamber of a peace treaty, and God—a big man—God outside himself—had taken hold of him and kept him. To Louis that could never happen; he was too unloving, too self-centred, too unimaginative ever to see lights from heaven. Indeed, she thought hopefully, Louis might, in the end, go further than Andrew. He might stand up in the strength of a man without the propping of a God at all.

"I've weakened him. All along I've weakened him. I've fussed over him like a hen after her duckling when it takes to the water. I wouldn't let him swim for fear he'd get drowned. And so—he just flops about and looks disgusting. I've made him run away from temptation. That was because I couldn't keep on being disappointed in him. Because I couldn't face the disgust of him coming home dirty and smelly and saying filthy things to me—and sleeping close to him. Andrew," she called to the baby, who looked at her solemnly and went on playing with the little pebbles at his feet. "Listen, darling, what mother's telling you. 'He that fights and runs away lives to fight another day.' I made him run away from whisky, and all the time it's throwing down challenges to him, putting out its tongue at him, pulling rude faces at him. I've been protecting myself from the things drunkards' wives have to put up with—Oh, but I was trying to protect him, too!"

The last words were wrung from her in self-defence.

"What I ought to have done was to take the whisky, make him look at it all round and tell it, with his own conviction and not mine, to go to hell. I ought never, never to have protected him, and made him a hothouse plant."

As she said it she knew, incontrovertibly, that she could never do anything but protect people. It was the way she was made. And she became very frightened that, some day, she might make Andrew a hothouse plant, too.

She looked at the thin, grey-backed book again and more light came to her. She flung herself on the ground, her face on the soft grass. The baby, looking at her wonderingly, crawled towards her, and snuggled up to her, his wet little hands on her neck.

"Oh make me weak!" she cried as though praying to the earth and the air and the water to batter her. "Make me weak—smash me and tear me up, so I'll have to be taken care of. Then I'll let him be strong instead of me! Oh but it's cruel! Why should one person be weak to make another strong? Why can't we march on in armour, shoulder to shoulder?"

And then came the thought that, perhaps, had not her father and Louis been the men they were she would never have learnt to wear her armour. The wisdom of nature that made the protective coverings of birds and beasts had given her her armour—made her grow her armour out of her surroundings. This thought made her gasp. She sat still a very long time letting it sink in.

"I wonder," she said slowly, looking out over the lake, a pool of fire in the setting sun, "if that's why Jesus died. He didn't want to, I think. He loved the quiet things of the world, little children and talking to friends, and doing things with his hands. I wonder if he had to die, when his teaching was finished, so that those others he loved might not get to depend on him too much? We're so fond of getting propped. I don't think people ought to have a Good Shepherd. Unless they only want to be silly sheep all their lives. And here I've been Good Shepherding Louis all this time till now he can't get along without my crook round his arm."

It was many years since she had consciously prayed, but now she thought of her father's prayers, and whispered:

"God—You know all about this muddle of mine. You gave Louis to me so that, in the end, he might be a path for You to walk along. I've tried to be a path for You towards him, but I thought I'd better help You along. I couldn't keep quiet. Oh how silly of me! God, I see now that I've been all wrong. I've been keeping him out of the world when I ought, all the time, to have been making him brave enough to face the evil in the world. Please God, let me be quiet now—and not keep tripping You up with my own ideas, my own strength when You walk along my life."

Her quick imagination, the imagination of a savage or a child, saw pictures where other people would have seen ethical ideas. She went on, softly:

"Walk over me with burning Feet. Oh don't worry, please, about how much it hurts, so long as You get to him in the end. Because I love him—and because he is the one You gave to me—the man I needed."

She stood up slowly, and felt that, at last, she had given in. The poor baby lay blissfullly asleep beside her on the ground. She took him in her arms and carried him home Then she sat down with pen and ink and wrote a letter. She was not sure when it would be posted, but she decided to get it written, at any rate. She felt fey—she felt that she was being led, now that she had asked to be kept quiet at last.

She wrote:

"'CASTLE LASHCAIRN' (It isn't really a castle. It's a hut).

"DEAR PROFESSOR KRAILL,

"Ever since I was fifteen you have been the very heart of my imagination. I used to read your lectures to my father, and because I've never been to school I had to get a dictionary to two words on every line. You enlightened me, and depressed me, and shocked me and annoyed me all at once in those days. But in your last Edinburgh lecture it seems to me that the spirit of God has come upon you to lead captivity captive. (I think that is such a beautiful sentence I can't help putting it in a letter to you, because I would like to write to you in beautiful words.) I would like to quote some more of the Bible to you, but you can read it for yourself. The fifth chapter of the second book of Kings—the story of Naaman the leper. I am the servant maid in that story, and I've just discovered that I've been trying to cure my lord's illness with lumps of cotton-wool. There is someone at home in Scotland who sends me all your lectures, and when I read the last ones I felt that you were the prophet in Samaria. I hear that you are lecturing in Sydney soon. I would come to hear you, but I can't leave my little kingdom here. And I don't think they'd approve of my small son at a University lecture. He is only two, and very busy always. I feel that, if I could talk to you, I should see a great light; you seem such a very shining person to me. And I'm a duffer. A well-meaning duffer with a task before her that needs brains. You talk of the socialization of knowledge—will you begin the socialization on my behalf? I wonder if you would like to see what life in the Bush is like, you who are a student of life? Then you could show me where Jordan is nowadays.

"This is very sincere, this request. I shall not be offended if you think it isn't, but I shall feel that there is no more light in the sky. I'd got resigned to failure when I read your lectures, and they wakened me to hope again, because they showed me that I've done every possible thing wrong. If you do come, please write a very long time in advance because we are thirty miles from the station and only go in for letters occasionally. If you can't come, I'll go on worrying with the lectures until I understand without you.

"Yours sincerely,
MARCELLA LASHCAIRN FARNE."

She fastened the letter up in between two books. It was three months before she read in a week-old Sydney "Sunday Times" that Professor Kraill, the eminent biologist, "whose fame in his newer field of research had preceded him to the Antipodes," was to lecture at Sydney University during the next three months. Marcella did not open the letter; she posted it to Sydney University and left the issue in the hands of the forces that had made her write it.

Professor Kraill got it when he was being bored to death in Sydney and he rather discredited the sincerity of it for he was being wearied to death by lion-hunters. Eminene men from the Old Country either get fêted or cut in the Colonies. He was fêted because he happened to arrive at a time when "culture" was fashionable, and Shakespeare Societies, Ibsen Evenings, History Saturday Afternoons and Science Sundays were the rage. Foreign legations and Government officials gave him dinners as deadly as any in England. He saw that he was to appear in character at these dinners. He was expected to wear a phylactery on his forehead inscribed "I AM A BIOLOGIST." He was expected to talk biology to the government ladies, who hoped he would say things that were "rather daring" but quotable. In fact, they hoped that he himself would be "rather daring"—but quotable! They talked about Shackleton's expedition, which was the affair of the moment, and thought that they were being flatteringly and intelligently biological when they asked him how seals lived under ice. There was a dance on the flagship which, thanks to the snotties, was quite alive. Then came a month's interim in the lectures when more festivities were threatened. Professor Kraill read Marcella's letter and thought she was probably a rather emotional, rather intense and rather original lion-hunter. But she had the redeeming feature of living in the Bush, thirty miles from anywhere. Conceivably, thirty miles from anywhere, there would be no festivities. He tossed up between the City and the Bush, and the Bush won. Giving out that he felt very unwell after the round of gaieties, he basely deserted, got into the most uncomfortable train in the world and, two days later, threw himself on the hospitality of the landlord of the bosker hotel at Cook's Wall, entirely omitting to let Marcella know that he was coming.

At Klondyke and Loose End they were great on celebrations. So very little except work happened that birthdays wedding-days, and anniversaries of all sorts wore greeted hilariously, and the various members of the community took it in turn to hold them at their various homesteads. A birthday happened to Mrs. Twist—her fortieth. She and Mr. Twist were the oldest inhabitants of the district and the birthday was a great occasion. Invitations were passed round from hand to mouth; about twenty grownups and twice as many children turned up one Saturday afternoon just before tea at the Homestead, which, decorated in branches of wattle and boughs of eucalyptus, looked very festive. The gathering had something of the nature of a surprise party in that most of the guests brought something to eat or drink. But most of them, in delicate compliment to the changed fortunes of Loose End, brought not necessities but luxuries. Jerry's gramophone was still hoarsely valiant; three Italians from Klondyke, manganese miners, brought mandolines; Jerry had recently acquired a mouth-organ with bells.

Marcella was always rather depressed about celebrations. Always Louis said, easily, that he would be safe; always he joined forces with the hard-bitten, hard-toiling miners who each brought his bottle of whisky and drank it without ill-effect. She could do nothing to help him: he resented her anxiety more and more as time went on.

The Homestead had grown. At the south side a big storeroom had been built: at one end of it flour-bags were stocked, both empty and full, to serve as seats for the dancers when they were exhausted. The guests sat long over tea, yarning, chaffing, gossiping and talking business; as it grew dusk the men sat on the verandah, smoking reflectively, talking little. In the living room the women all chattered at once. Louis had been working during the day on the gorse clearing again; until it was all burnt off it was a constant menace, for wind-blown seeds and underground leaders seemed to spring up spitefully in the midst of growing lucerne and wheat. Marcella's beloved garden had had a struggle against it: so had Mrs. Twist's patch of vegetables, so they were all making a gigantic effort to uproot the whole thing and get rid of it. Across the clearing the fire crackled and blazed and died down to a ruddy glow; in the storeroom Jerry's gramophone led off with "Oh Dry those Tears," and the youngsters started to dance. A new record was put on, because "Oh Dry those Tears" was not conducive; the sound of rhythmically beating feet drew the others towards the ballroom, and Marcella was left on the verandah listening to the barking of some half-dozen dogs, brought by the guests and tied up behind the Homestead. She knew that the massed force of cups and tumblers was not quite sufficient and decided to wash them before they would be needed for relays of coffee.

She was feeling very wretched; it was the end of the month; in two days Louis, already nervy and restless, would get the month's money, either by persuasion or force, and either vanish for a week or, coming home every night from Klondyke, reduce her to a state of inarticulate wretchedness. She was on the point of losing hope entirely. Sometimes it seemed to her that he drank deliberately now that the first flush of gratitude and love for her, the first zest of having a son, had worn off. He lied until she was sickened of the sound of his stammering voice—for never once did he lie without stammering. If he had not struggled and been so pitiful she would have given up, then, and been content to take three weeks' strained peace to one of blank horror. But his despair when he came out of his hell goaded her to keep on hoping.

She was washing the cups out on the verandah. Those of enamelled tin Andrew was trusted to carry indoors as she wiped them. She heard a horse coming along in the distance and guessed that it was a delayed reveller from Klondyke as she saw a tall man whom she did not recognize make for the storm centre of things in the ballroom. Clouds of dust and flour were eddying out of the door in a stream of light from the kerosene lamp. He dismounted and stood in the haze for a moment. Then he looked round in bewilderment and caught sight of her. The gramophone was playing "Rock of Ages."

"Can you tell me what is going on in there? Is it St. Vitus' Dance?"

Marcella looked at him and gave a little shout of laughter.

"No, it's Mrs. Twist's birthday. Didn't you know?"

"How could I? Never heard of her. I'm looking for Mrs. Farne. They lent me this animal at Klondyke. It seems days ago. They said she knew the way blindfold. They didn't think to tell me she didn't know it unless she was blindfold."

Marcella laughed again, and knew who he was.

"If it hadn't been for those fires I should never have got here. But, perhaps you can tell me where Mrs. Farne lives? They all seemed to know her at Klondyke."

Marcella pointed towards the glowing gorse.

"That's where I live. I'm Marcella Farne," she said. "But why didn't you say you were coming? Mr. Twist would have fetched you in his buggy. He loves meeting people at Cook's Wall because he tries to convince them that it's a real road he's driving them along. And it isn't, you know."

He sat down on the edge of the verandah, looking distastefully at the mare, who shook her head impatiently. Marcella gave her water and let her wander, when she had taken off her saddle and bridle.

"Suppose you hadn't been able to ride. I didn't think Professors had time for that sort of thing."

"Neither did I till a few hours ago," he said, with a short laugh, taking out a cigarette-case and offering it to her. She sat down rather trustfully on a verandah rail Louis had carpentered. Andrew stared at them both and made off silently towards the noise. "But how did you know who I was?"

"I only know one other man in the world, you see, and he's an old doctor in Scotland."

He was watching her as she spoke.

"I see," he said. "And you think you know me?"

"Yes. I know you like I know St. Paul and Siegfried and Parsifal—people living in my mind all the time. I've talked to you for hours, you know—hours and hours—"

"It was very good of you to ask me to come. But—embarrassing, you know! I simply had to come, out of curiosity. To find someone reading one's lectures right in the heart of the Bush!—"

"I thought you would come," she said, staring at him gravely, "when Dr. Angus told me what you said about the socialization of knowledge. But I can hardly believe it's you, even now. Yet somehow you look as if you could think those last lectures of yours. Before I read those you seemed tremendously clever and—and rousing. To speak biologically—"

"Oh, please!" he said, smiling. "They've been doing that in Sydney—out of encyclopedias—!"

"I was going to say that your thoughts always fertilize my brain. But you must be hungry, so I'll not tell you what I want to about the lectures yet."

She slipped off the verandah rail and went indoors, leaving the Professor rather amazed. He was not quite sure whether to think she was a serious and dull young person, absolutely sincere and very much a hero-worshipper, or one of the lionizing type he had met in the city. He was deciding that she was too young for the latter role when she called him inside the candle-lit room.

"I hope you drink tea. We drink quarts of it here."

He nodded reassuringly.

"There's some beer, too, but the shepherds and old Mike from Klondyke will have to drink that. It was put into a kerosene tin that hadn't been boiled and it smells terrible. But they won't notice."

"They'll probably be dead," he remarked.

"Mike drinks methylated spirit and the shepherds have a bottle of squareface each on Sunday afternoons when Betty and Andrew and I look after the sheep. Nothing hurts us. We're hard people out here."

"What made you write to me like that?" he asked, still puzzled. "I still have no idea—"

"I wanted to see you, for one thing. But that's only a small thing. I can't tell you now. I'm the cook to-day, you see, and they'll be wanting their supper in a little while. I must go and find somewhere for you to sleep, too. How long can you stay?"

"I'm not sure," he said guardedly. "I don't want to embarrass you, however much you embarrass me."

"I'd like you to stay for months," she said simply. "I—we're very lonely."

The gramophone groaning out the "Merry Widow" waltz seemed to contradict her words, with its accompaniment of tramping feet, laughter and talk. "This only happens on birthdays and things. Even then, it's lonely."

"I don't believe you're any more lonely than I," he said.

"I can understand that. I've felt it in your lectures. You're so much wiser than most people."

"What rubbish!" he said with a laugh, wondering again if she were sincere. "Much less, very much less wise than most people."

"If you tell me that I'll be wishing you'd not come. I'm counting everything on your being wiser than other people—and shining—like your lectures. But Louis once said that people usually think much better than they can do—"

"That was very penetrating of Louis," he said. Then—"I hope I don't disappoint you. I do—most people. Women especially—"

"Do you? Why?" she said with her puzzled frown.

"I suppose it's because I'm what you called, in your letter, a student of life. I like to understand things—and people. Particularly do I like to understand women. But one finds it impossible to take them seriously, as a rule."

"I don't know many women—" she began.

"And how many men did you say? Two?" he said, smiling. She shook her head.

"I'm afraid I take everyone rather seriously."

"It's a mistake," he said. "I used to. But they disappoint one. When I stopped taking people, women especially, seriously, and made love to them, I found them quite adorable—"

"It seems silly."

"It's quite a delightful pastime."

They had gone out on the verandah again now, and she looked across at the lake that glimmered red in the fire-glow.

"You didn't seem to think women a pastime in those lectures of yours three years ago. You said then that they were man's heel of Achilles. You seemed rather in a panic about them—"

He nodded his head and, meeting her intent eyes, decided that she had to be taken seriously. He was just going to speak when she went on:

"But you've got past that now—the panic stage, the pastime stage, the cynical stage—"

"I suppose you're thinking of those last Edinburgh lectures? They're the furthest I have got yet. I believe they are a very clever piece of work, a sort of high-water mark. But there are so many pulls to jerk us back from the high-water mark, don't you think? And as Louis—wasn't it?—said, we most of us think better than we do—"

They had reached the haze of the ballroom by this time. People sitting on the flour-bags sent up white auras which mingled with the dust and the smoke of strong pipes to make an effective screen. Kraill looked astonished. Marcella smiled.

"They say Englishmen take their pleasures sadly," he whispered confidentially. "I don't think they could say the same for Colonials."

"They work so hard, and they like to let off steam sometimes," she said. "By the way, I must simply say you are a friend from England. If I say you are someone very wise they'll either be rude to you or frightened of you. And all the girls will want to dance with you if I say you're from London. They're mad on dancing, and they'll take it for granted that you are. They'll expect you to teach them all the new things."

He looked startled as he watched the swaying crowd. It certainly looked dangerous, if it was not difficult. The gramophone was playing the "March of the Gladiators"; the mandolines were tinkling anything and the mouth-organ had given it up entirely, merely punctuating the first beat of every bar with a thin concussion of the bell. Betty had sprinkled the floor with a slippery preparation she got from the store, called "ice-powder."

"Be careful when you cross the floor. It's worse than ice, to make it easy for those who can't dance. You just cling to someone and slip if you don't know any steps. Some of them say their slip is a waltz: others call it a gavotte, and some say it's the tango. Old Mike's very definite that it's a jig. The great thing is to make the slip coincide with a groan from the gramophone. Just watch a minute, and you'll see that there is quite a lot of method in it."

She looked round for Louis, who was in a corner with some of the miners. By his flushed face, his high voice and hysterical laugh she guessed that she must try to keep him from seeing Kraill that night. She never could be quite sure what he would do or say.

Mrs. Twist was pathetically honoured that the "gentleman from England" should have chosen her birthday for his visit, and Marcella left him with her.

"It's a pity to be Martha to-night, Professor Kraill," she said in a low voice. "I want to be Mary—"

She was gone before he could answer.

The noise had made Andrew cross and tired, and she put him to bed in the hammock under the gum trees, and hitched up her own hammock in the bedroom next to Louis's. She knew that he would be drunk to-night; experience had given her a plan of action. She had to pretend to go to bed with him and stay with him until he was asleep. Then she crept out into the open air beside the boy.

She tried to transform the storeroom into the semblance of a bedroom, but it did not occur to her to apologize for discrepancies; she would not have done so had the king come to visit her: indeed, she considered that he had, for Kraill had always taken his place in her imagination, as she had told him, with heroes of romance.

When she got back to the Homestead everyone was ready for supper. They had to get away early, for most of them had to walk the five miles to Klondyke. The Professor seemed to be at home with the miners. His air of intense interest that had so won Dr. Angus' heart had immediately flattered and enslaved them all. Before they said good night he had committed himself to visiting them all. Marcella won a good deal of reflected glory by possessing him as friend.

"Are you tired of us?" she asked him after a while.

"I am very glad I won that toss!" he said.

"Which?"

"I tossed up whether to stay in Sydney or come here"—he stopped sharp, for it seemed to him that she looked hurt. He decided that, with Marcella, it would be better to be honest than pleasant.

"As a matter of fact, your letter completely puzzled me. I'm a modest sort of person, you know. To be asked to help anyone seemed such a wonderful thing to me that I scarcely believed it. If a man had written the letter I should have believed it more. But as I told you, I can't take women seriously—"

"Before you've finished with me you will," she said, and laughed.

She was just going to suggest to him that he was tired and should go to bed: she was so anxious to get him out of the way before Louis came out of his corner that she could scarcely talk coherently. But just at that moment Louis came up to her. He took no notice of Kraill or Mrs. Twist, who was quite used to him by this time. At the back of Louis's mind was the obsession that in two days he would draw his pay; half of him was a blazing hunger for whisky after three weeks' abstinence and hard work and peace; the other half of him was fighting the desire desperately; he wanted to win over one of these warring halves to the other; the fact that he had been drinking all the evening had weakened the finer half; his brain worked quickly. If he could find some grievance against Marcella he would be able to excuse himself to himself for getting drunk, for taking the money that he knew she needed. He wanted peace—unity within. So he raved at her because the tag had come off his shoelace, and it was her wifely duty to see that a new lace had been put into the shoe that morning. From that he went on to the usual gibberish of French, the usual accusation against men in the neighbourhood, the usual mélange of Chinese tortures and gruesome operations. From Kraill's horrified face Marcella saw that he understood more than she did. She had never been sufficiently morbid to ask anyone to translate his words for her, even after more than three years of them.

She wondered weakly what would happen. Judging Kraill by her father and Dr. Angus she knew that his ordinary code of convention could not let him disregard Louis as the others did, as being merely a rather weak, silly young man, who "went on the shikker" every month and made many varieties of a fool of himself. Everyone gave him the mixture of disgusted toleration and amusement given to a spoilt child who kicks his nurse in the park, and pounds his toys to pieces. Marcella never talked about him to anyone; she cut off ungraciously the attempts at sympathetic pumping made by the women at Klondyke. They concluded that she did not feel anything since she never cried out. But, looking at Kraill's face for one fleeting instant Marcella knew that he understood how sore and shamed she was.

"He's very ill, really," she said in a low voice. "But no one believes it. They think he's just wicked. I'll tell you all about it to-morrow. I expect you know without my telling you. But I didn't want you to see him like this. I've fixed up a bed for you at home. Will you let Jerry show you the way?"

He decided instantly that she knew her own business better than he did, and that his desire, both natural and conventional, not to leave a woman to see a drunken man to bed, was not going to help her.

"Shut your door up tight, please," she said. "He may not go to sleep for a long time."

He nodded, looked at her to show her that he had begun to take her seriously, and turned away with Jerry, rather astonished to find himself dismissed so coolly from the scene. She turned to Louis, forgetting Kraill. Jerry, who adored Marcella, became very voluble on the subject of Louis; Kraill listened mechanically to all he was saying as they crossed the paddock.

It was one of Louis's bad nights; he had been drinking both whisky and squareface. A letter from his mother, saying how she was longing to see her grandson, had roused him to great deeds. His fall after such resolutions was always the more bitter; always it needed more than usual justification; always Marcella was the scapegoat. She had forgotten Kraill in the intensity of her misery until, worn out by his ravings, Louis fell asleep. She knew, then, that he was safe for the rest of the night and she crept out silently into the cool cleanness of the garden, closing the door softly. Only his loud, stertorous breathing came to her with mutterings and groans. The moon had risen and little mist-wreaths walked in and out among the wonga-vines on the fence: Marcella's golden flowers with which she had planted the clearing all round the house—nasturtiums, sunflowers, marigolds and eczcoltzias—shone silvery and ethereal. The smoke from the dying fires rose in thin white needles, plumed at the top: out in the Bush a dingo barked shrilly and some small beast yelped in pain. Andrew stirred and she tucked the clothes round him, kissing his brown, round arm and fingers, wishing he were awake so that he could be crushed in her arms and let her bury her aching head on his wriggling little body for an instant—he was never still for longer.

She sat down on the edge of the verandah, her arm round the post; her eyes were aching; she felt too tired and helpless to go on living and yet the relief of having got Louis to sleep was really very great. She was trying to decide to write to Dr. Angus, asking him to give her some sort of sleeping draught she could give Louis when he had one of his bad times; she had forgotten that, in a week's time, all the money would be spent again and they would be happy for another period: but to-night's misery, more and more each time, was beginning to shut out pictures of a peaceful to-morrow, a vindication of faith.

A faint sound behind her made her start in horror, afraid lest he had wakened. But it was Kraill who was standing quite still looking down at her.

"Does this sort of thing happen very often?" he said with an air of intimate interest that reassured her.

"I'd forgotten about you," she said jerkily. "I'm so sorry—if I'd known you were coming I'd have arranged for you to stay at the Homestead to-night."

"But does it?"

"He can't help it."

"It can't go on, you know," said Kraill, lighting a cigarette and throwing it down impatiently.

"I know. That's why I wrote you that letter. He is so unhappy."

Kraill made an impatient gesture. Marcella stood up slowly.

"Are you tired? You must be," she said.

"No. I want to see this thing settled," he said. She felt very hopeful to hear him speak so determinedly.

"It's queer that you think as I do about that, Professor Kraill," she said with a faint smile. "People say other's troubles are not their business. But I think that's a most wicked heresy. I always interfere if I see people miserable. I can't bear to be blank and uninterested."

"Neither can I. I often get disliked for it, however," he said with a quick, impatient sigh. "And they don't often accept one's interference."

"I shall," she said gently. "I shall do whatever you tell me if it will make Louis well. I think that is really all I care about in the world. Sometimes, even, I think I care more about Louis than Andrew. I've a feeling that he's much more a little boy than Andrew is. You know, all my life, since I saw my father very unhappy and ill, I've wanted to save people—in great droves! And now I'm beginning to think I can't save one man."

"And you think I can?"

"I'm quite sure of it. People are not wise like you are just for fun. But will you come along the clearing with me a little way? I'm afraid our voices will waken Louis, and then he won't get any sleep. That is, if you're really not tired."

They went through the moon-silvered grass down to the lake. She sat under the big eucalyptus which clapped its leathery hands softly.

"I was sitting here when I read your lectures—the last ones—and decided to write to you. It is like—like Mount Sinai to me now. Will you talk to me out of the thunders, Professor Kraill?"

He looked at her for a moment, recalling the rather heart-breaking calmness and common-sense with which she had soothed Louis a while ago; he remembered her cool, patient logic in the midst of the drunken man's ravings—and he decided in a flash of insight that this rather rhetorical way of talking to him was very real to her. She saw him with the dream-endowed eyes of the Kelt and, embarrassing though it might be to him, and unreal though it made him feel, he had to accept the fact that, for her, he was clothed in a sort of shine. He saw, too, that she could not do without some sort of shine in her life.

"Tell me all about it," he said. "You don't mind talking to a stranger about these things?"

"You have never been a stranger to me, Professor Kraill. And I don't believe there is such a thing as a stranger, really. I like to think of the way the knights always went about ready to interfere with a good stout sword when they saw anyone in trouble."

And so she talked to him, and as she talked his quick mind gained an impression of her going about sordid ways and small woman tasks in knightly armour. After awhile he said something unexpected. It made her impatient for it showed that he was thinking of her. She was thinking only of Louis.

"You know, you make the years slip away," he said. "I have dreamed that women might go shoulder to shoulder with men, standing up straight and strong."

"Yes, I know," she said softly. "I think many a time I've very deliberately stood up straight when I wanted to lie down and cry my eyes out, just because I got the idea of a woman knight from those lectures of yours. And your talk about the softness of women rather goaded me. I wouldn't be soft."

"Soft! You're not soft," he interrupted.

"But think how expensive it is!" she said with a voice that shook a little. "It took a lifetime of discipline and two weak men to make me hard. I know now, very well, that Louis has been softened, weakened by me. To save him I think I must crumple up."

She caught her breath sharply.

"And I don't see how I can," she added.

"One might pretend," he said slowly, looking reflectively at her face.

"I couldn't. I can't pretend anything. That's the worst of me. And it seems so wrong to me that, to make one human being strong, another must be weak. And it seems to me that the weak thing kills the strong in the end. Like ivy, you know, choking out the life of an oak."

"I don't think he is likely to kill you."

"I very much wish he would, except that I dare not leave him. I have weighed it all up very carefully, and I feel it would be better to die than live this way. Sometimes I feel I shall get unclean—right inside. I can't explain it. There are things in Louis I can't bear—little meannesses, and selfishnesses. He locks things up—even here, where no one ever comes. That's a horrible spirit of selfishness, isn't it?"

She told him calmly, uncomplainingly, impersonally as one talks to a doctor, of his locking up his cigarettes, his tobacco, his writing paper; of how he carried the only pencil about in his pocket and hid away the papers from his mother, the books from Dr. Angus until he had read them. One day last week they had been short of milk, and Marcella had been anxious about the boy's food. The breakfast was on the table; she had to run to her bedroom for a bib for Andrew. When she got back Louis had already poured all the milk into his tea, saying that he had done it by accident. Another time she had thrown away the boy's tablet of soap by accident, and could not find it anywhere. Louis had his own tablet, locked away; there was no other nearer than Klondyke except the home-made stuff composed of mutton fat and lye, very cruel to tender skin. And he had made a scene when she asked him for his soap for Andrew and, when she, too, made a scene threw it away into the scrub where she could not find it. Little things—little straws that showed the way of the hurricane.

"You see," she said calmly. "It wouldn't do for me to die, and leave Andrew to that sort of love, would it? I knew a little boy once who had to look after his father," and she told him of Jimmy Peters on the ship. "I think if it came to dying, the only thing would be to take Andrew along too."

"Don't you think you're being rather conceited?" he said suddenly. "Has it occurred to you that you're taking too much on yourself? You admit that you're keeping your husband a parasite. Are you going to do the same to your child? Are you the ultimate kindliness of the world? You tell me of your own stern childhood. Has it hurt you? You must be logical, you know!" he added, smiling at her.

"I think I want Andrew to be happy rather than heroic. Heroism is such a cold fierce thing. I'm only just realizing what a coward I've been, and how utterly unheroic my hope in Louis has been. But it's so natural, isn't it? I didn't dare face the rest of life without the belief that some day we should be happy. Every time he gets drunk I've told myself, very decidedly, that this was the last time. And I know I've been lying to myself because I daren't face the truth."

Kraill smoked thoughtfully for a few minutes.

"I suppose it never occurred to you that, without the drink to consider, you would not be happy with him?" he said at last.

"Oh yes. We are quite happy in between," she said with a sigh.

"On the edge of things? Always with reservations?" he said quickly.

"Only on the edge of things," she said slowly. "How well you know!"

"I know all about it. I have never been past the edge of things myself. But always I think I shall be some day. I suppose I am quite twice your age, and still I am romantic, still I think there's a miracle waiting for me round the corner of life."

"I used to think that until just a little while ago. I used to think there would be a day when I should shine. Now I daren't think of it because I know I never shall. After all, stars and suns and things must be lonely, don't you think?"

"I don't know."

The moon sank, the dawn wind ruffled the grass and whispered in the tops of the rustling trees, making soft, eerie sounds.

She stood up suddenly. Unconsciously she held out her hand to help him up. Then she laughed bitterly, and twisted her hands in each other behind her.

"I'm sorry. I forgot you didn't need helping up," she said. He looked at her curiously.

"This is an appalling way to treat a guest," she said as they walked slowly towards home. "To sit out with him in the middle of the night and keep him awake. You make me selfish. I've never talked about Louis to anyone before. You make me dependent, Professor Kraill."

"And that, you say, is what you need."

Louis was calling out thickly, wildly, as they came within distance. She started and began to hurry. "I wouldn't go in there!" said Kraill sharply.

"It doesn't worry me now. If I don't go in, he's too frightened to sleep, and then he'll wake Andrew. And if he doesn't sleep he's very ill next day. Sleep gets rid of the effects of whisky, you know. Oh just listen to him! Why can't I do something? You will help me—you must!" she cried, clutching at his hands for a minute. To his intense distress he saw her eyes full of tears, and saw her cover them with her hands as she ran into Louis's room. He stood on the verandah watching her shut the door. Through the trellis window came sounds of a soft voice and a wild one mingling.