I sat and wondered at the marvellous self-containment of the man before me.  With this crash impending, just imagine the worry he must have gone through!  But never had the least suspicion that he was troubled found betrayal on his brow.

“Good-bye, Syb,” he said; “though I’m a nobody now, if I could ever be of use to you, don’t be afraid to ask me.”

I remember him wringing the limp hand I mechanically stretched out to him and then slowly revaulting the fence.  The look of him riding slowly along with his broad shoulders drooping despondently waked me to my senses.  I had been fully engrossed with the intelligence of Harold’s misfortune—­that I was of sufficient importance to concern him in any way had not entered my head; but it suddenly dawned on me that Harold had said that I was, and he was not in the habit of uttering idle nothings.

While fortune smiled on him I had played with his manly love, but now that she frowned had let him go without even a word of friendship.  I had been poor myself, and knew what awaited him in the world.  He would find that they who fawned on him most would be first to turn their backs on him now.  He would be rudely disillusioned regarding the fables of love and friendship, and would become cynical, bitter, and sceptical of there being any disinterested good in human nature.  Suffering the cold heart-weariness of this state myself, I felt anxious at any price to save Harold Beecham from a like fate.  It would be a pity to let one so young be embittered in that way.

There was a short cut across the paddocks to a point of the road where he would pass; and with these thoughts flashing through my mind, hatless and with flying hair, I ran as fast as I could, scrambling up on the fence in a breathless state just as he had passed.

“Hal, Hal!” I called.  “Come back, come back!  I want you.”

He turned his horse slowly.

“Well, Syb, what is it?”

“Oh, Hal, dear Hal!  I was thinking too much to say anything; but you surely don’t think I’d be so mean as to care a pin whether you are rich or poor—­only for your own sake?  If you really want me, I will marry you when I am twenty-one if you are as poor as a crow.”

“It is too good to be true.  I thought you didn’t care for me.  Sybylla, what do you mean?”

“Just what I say,” I replied, and without further explanation, jumping off the fence I ran back as fast as I had come.

When half-way home I stopped, turned, looked, and saw Harold cantering smartly homewards, and heard him whistling a merry tune as he went.

After all, men are very weak and simple in some ways.

I laughed long and sardonically, apostrophizing myself thus: 

“Sybylla Penelope Melvyn, your conceit is marvellous and unparalleled!  So you actually imagined that you were of sufficient importance to assist a man through life—­a strong, healthy young man too, standing six feet three and a half in his socks, a level-headed business man, a man of high connections, spotless character, and influential friends, an experienced bushman, a man of sense, and, above all, a man—­a man I The world was made for men.