“Don’t you like it, Louis?” she asked, as she fitted her finger into the little holes and found that she took the smallest size ring.  “I do.  I think it’s frightfully exciting.”

“I know you do.  Women love getting married.  They’re cock of the walk on their wedding days, if they never are again.  On her wedding day a woman is triumphant!  She’s making a public exhibition of the fact that she has achieved the aim of her life—­she’s landed a man!”

“Louis!” she cried indignantly, and next minute decided to think that he was joking as they reached the jeweller’s shop again.  She had been looking at the jewellery in the window:  it was her first peep at a jeweller’s shop, and she thought how expensive everything was.  She noticed the price of wedding rings.  When Louis came out with the ring in a little box which he put into his pocket, he told her casually that it cost something three times more than the prices in the window.

As they walked up the street he told her that he was tired to death, that he had not been to bed since the Oriana left Melbourne.

“I thought you stayed at an hotel that night,” she said.

“No, as a matter of fact, my pet, we got run in, all of us.  I don’t know, now, what we did when we found the boat had gone without us, but we made up our minds to paint the town red.  So we got landed in the police’s hands for the night and locked up.”

“Oh Louis!”

“It was a great game!  The funny old magistrate next morning was as solemn as a judge.  He read us a lecture about upholding the prestige of the Motherland in a new country.  Then he made us promise him faithfully not to have another drink as long as we were in the state of Victoria.  We promised right enough, and kept it—­because we knew we were leaving Victoria in a few hours.  Ole Fred was as solemn as the judge himself about it.  But when we got to Albury—­that’s on the borders, you know—­my hat, how we mopped it!  I haven’t got over it yet.  But after to-day I’m on the water-wagon, Marcella.  Lord, here’s the marriage shop!”

It looked like a shop, with green wire shades over the glass windows, not at all a terrifying place.  But Louis took off his hat, mopped his forehead and looked at her desperately.

“Look here, old girl, I shall never get through this without a whisky-and-soda.  I’m a stammering bundle of nerves.  I’ll never get our names down right unless I have a drink to give me a bit of Dutch courage.  If it hadn’t been for that Melbourne madness I’d have been all right.  But look at me”—­and he held out a trembling hand.  “Marcella, for God’s sake say you’ll let me—­”

She felt she could not, to-day of all days, preach to him, but she could not trust herself to speak.  She merely nodded her head, and without waiting another instant he darted into the nearest hotel, leaving her standing on the pavement.  Her heart was aching, but every moment, every word he said made her all the more cussedly determined to see the thing through, and he certainly looked better when he came out ten minutes later.