It was not until after six months of sanity that he told her all about the miracle.  One evening, after the child had gone to bed, they were sitting on the verandah.  Louis had been talking of going home to start afresh in England.

“The voyage would do you good, Marcella.  My diagnostic eye has been on you lately,” he said as he lighted a cigarette and passed it to her.  “You’re looking fagged, and it’s unnatural to see you looking fagged.  You’re getting thin.  I don’t want to see you suddenly evaporate, old girl.”

She shook her head and stared unseeingly over the soft green of springing life that, before they came, had been devastating gorse.

“Yes, clearly a trip to England is indicated,” he said.  “You’re alone too much.  Marcella, I believe you’re thinking every minute about Kraill.”

“I—­can’t help it,” she said in a low voice.  “They’re—­good thoughts, now.”

He looked at her, and something about the droop of her shoulders contracted his throat, made a pain at his heart.

“It’s hard—­” he began.

“It’s a hunger, Louis.  You understand it, don’t you?  But I can’t buy it in a bottle!”

“Marcella!” he cried passionately.  “I’ll—­I’ll come into your thoughts in time.  Lord knows I’m trying hard enough.”

“Oh my dear, don’t I know?” she said gently.  “And has it occurred to you what a mercy it is for me that you’re like this now?  If I had to hide everything up, like I used to, I couldn’t bear it—­never seeing him again—­if you didn’t help me to.”

“It’s queer,” he said slowly.  “Most people—­husband and wife—­would not be able to talk about this sort of thing to each other.  They’d hide and lie to each other.”

“We’ve both been weak—­and we’ve both been helped.  And these demands we make of each other teach us so much.  If Kraill had not demanded courage of me I’d—­he’d have had me.  It’s no use lying about it, is it?  Why should you be so frank about your whisky, and give yourself away to me every time about it, and I hide up my weakness from you?”

“You’re—­weirdly honest, old girl,” he said with a short laugh.

“Yes.  Even now, if I had not promised him courage of thinking, I suppose—­he’d have me—­but I had to live up to what he saw in me.”

“And that, of course, is what saved me,” he said quietly.

“I’ve often wondered,” she said.  “Are you going to tell me now?”

There was a long silence.  He smoked two cigarettes as his mind went back to that hot, strange day.

“I went out,” he began at last, “to kill him.  I’d always been a coward before.  But then I didn’t know what fear was.  In a crisis like that—­Marcella, listen to me getting back the psychology I learnt at the hospital!—­the ruling emotion comes on top.  And my ruling emotion, I think, is selfishness.  Brutally frank, old lady!  Learnt that from you.  But do you remember that soap, when young Andrew got his face skinned because I wouldn’t let him have mine?  And—­heaps of times—­about grub, and things.  Oh yes,” he went on, as she looked startled, “I’ve quite realized how selfish I always was to you.  Well, don’t you see how it worked?  I thought Kraill had got you.  You were my property.  I just couldn’t bear that.  The only thing seemed to be to kill him.”