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 egoisme a 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.