“Oh blast you—­too fine to come near me, are you?  You were damned glad to pick me up, anyway—­and so you ought to be, with your drunken old scab of a father!”

She, in her turn, blazed and tingled; murder was in the ends of her fingers that quivered towards him.  Luckily she had dropped the pickaxe.  But her movements were slow, and his quick, and he got behind her in an instant.  Next moment, without realizing what he was doing, he pushed her violently.  She stumbled a few steps and fell heavily against the blunt end of the pickaxe.  For an instant he stood looking at her; the next moment with a hoarse cry he was kneeling beside her.

“Oh my darling,” he cried.  “I told you I’d kill you in the end!  I told you the damn stuff was making a madman of me.”

The whisky vanished from him like the flashing of lightning.  Lifting her in his arms he carried her homewards and laid her down on the verandah.  Frantic with fear he was going to fetch Mrs. Twist when she sat up rather shakily and looked at him.

“I suppose that’s what you’ve been expecting me to do—­faint all over the place—­swounds and vapours,” she said, laughing faintly.  “Louis, it was a horrible feeling.”

“Marcella,” he sobbed, kissing her hands, kneeling beside her desperate in his self-abasement.  “I thought I’d killed you.”

“You’re not much of a doctor if you don’t know I’d take much more killing than that,” she said.  “And I wanted to kill you for a minute, so we’re equal.”

In a torrent all his explanations came pouring out.  He had thought the whisky hunger was killed; he had tried to test his certainty and had failed.

“I got cocky, old girl.  I swanked to myself!  I thought I’d got it beat and I’d just go and have one whisky at the Station Hotel to satisfy my own conviction.  But when I’d had one I couldn’t help it.  I seemed to be outside myself, watching myself for the first two or three.  I was interested.  I kept thinking ’I’ll tell Marcella she need not be frightened any more.  I can drink two or three whiskies and not be a bally Blue Ribboner any more.  We need not be banished to the Bush for the rest of our lives to keep me out of danger.’  Then I got muddled and quite lost grip.  It had a sort of chemical effect, you know.  I hated you for keeping me from whisky that was making me feel so fine and jolly again.  I felt I’d been a bit of a prig lately.  I loved the stationmaster and a few manganese miners who came in.  In fact, I just wallowed again.  I came home hating you.  I didn’t come to see you.  I came for money.  And that’s all.  The whole thing’s hopeless.”

“It was my fault this time, Louis.  I went to bed and left you.  If I’d not been so proud and so huffy I’d have kept you.”

“Yes, but only for a time, dear.  I saw it all in a flash to-night when you lay there and I thought you were dead.  Marcella, no savage would have done that—­hurting you just now.”