There was a long silence.  She crept a little closer to him and put her hand into his.  He held it tight.  It was almost as if her world were shaking about her and even his unsteady hand seemed some support.

At last she said, as if talking to herself.

“Louis—­can’t something be done for us all?  Can’t we have these things cut out of us like cancers?  Can’t we get rid of these horrible desires as we’ve lost tails and hair and things we don’t need?  Then in time people would be born without them.  Louis—­you don’t think—­think of me like that, do you—­as a—­a hunger?  As something you must have if you don’t have whisky, or as something that will drive you to whisky if I go away as Violet did?”

“I’m—­I’m afraid I do, old girl,” he said.  “It’s natural—­I say, Marcella—­you’re only a kid.  I don’t believe you quite realize what you’ve taken on—­in that way.”

She looked startled.  Then she laughed gaily.

“I’m not afraid of my part of it, Louis,” she said, “but I can’t help thinking that if I’m to be—­as you put it—­a sort of hunger substituted for whisky, we’re all wrong.  Suppose I died, for instance?”

“Marcella, if you die I shall die too.  Anything else is unthinkable.  I can’t face life without you, now.  I can’t be a pariah again.  You’re a hunger to me.  I’ll admit it.  But you’re more.  You’re a saviour.  And—­you don’t know anything about it, dearie.  But when we’re married you will, and I suppose I’ll be just the same sort of hunger to you, then.  It’s no use blinking your eyes to it.  And—­be damned glad I love you, and am not like some sort of men.  Otherwise—­well, Lord knows what would have happened to you.  You’re so honest that you think everyone else is.  And yet, transparent little fool that you are, in common-sense things, I know that you’re going to keep me straight.”

Back came trooping all the visions of Deliverance, a rich pageantry shutting away the footmarks of the beast she had just glimpsed.

As every beat of the engines brought them nearer and nearer to Sydney consideration of ways and means became even more anxious.  Louis spent glowering days.  Marcella was quite certain that everything would turn out well.

It was in the dull run between Colombo and Fremantle that they decided upon a plan of action.  The nights were getting colder now; they had to sit in thick coats in the evenings.  This particular evening it was raining greyly, but they could not sit in the saloon because Ole Fred and his gang had started a smoking concert, and Marcella and Louis would have been ejected forcibly.

“You’re such a fatuous optimist, Marcella,” he said impatiently.  “Lord, I wish I’d never started on this business!  Everything’s against us—­I knew it would be!  We’ll give it up.  You go off into the back blocks where you will at least be sure of food and a roof.  And I’ll go to the devil in the same old way as quickly as possible.”