“I d-didn’t want y-y-you to think my p-people couldn’t afford to—­to—­” he stammered in a low voice.

“Oh, what an idiot you are!  My father was always calling me an idiot, but if he’d known you!  My goodness—­he said I was a double-distilled one!  Whatever are you?”

“There you are, you see,” he grumbled.

“But, Louis, whatever does it matter?  My people couldn’t afford to pay more for me, and I don’t care who knows it.  We’ll get there as soon—­”

“I—­d-don’t w-want to g-get there.  What’s at the end of it?  I know very well—­I’ll throw my damned self overboard, and then they’ll see what they’ve done.”

“Who’s they?  And what is it they’ve done?” She had no idea that it was an extraordinary thing to take so much interest in a perfect stranger.  All her world hitherto had had the claims of friendship upon her.

“They never understood me,” he cried passionately.  “They were always trying to tie me down—­they were always looking for faults.  That’s enough to make a man go to the devil.”

“Is it?  Tell me all about it,” she said, drawing a little closer.

“Do you know,” he cried bitterly, so intent that he forgot his nervousness and did not stammer, “I was the best man in my year.  They all told me so, the Dean and everyone—­but I never had a chance.  I never got a free hand.  And now do you know what I am?  All because they never understood me?”

She shook her head wonderingly.

“I’m a remittance man.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t you know?  They’re very picturesque in fiction!  You’ll find h-h-heaps of them in Australia, spewed out as far as possible from the Old Country!  It’s the dumping ground, Australia is!”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I went to church with the Mater last Sunday.  I suppose she thought it would induce the right atmosphere—­something sacrificial, you know.  We yawped some psalms—­the Mater and Pater are great at that.  There was one bit I noticed particularly—­’Moab is my washpot, over Edom will I cast my shoe.’  That reminds me of Australia.  They kick us out, pitch us out over there like old boots.”

“But don’t you want to go?” she protested, frowning.  “I’m just dying to go.  It’s such adventure.”

“Adventure!  Perhaps it is, for you.  It depends on how much money you’ve got.”

“Ten pounds,” she said guilelessly.

“Do you know what they’re allowing me?  A miserable pound a week!  Doled out once a week, mind you!  Little Louis must toddle up to the General Post Office in Sydney every English mail day, and if he says ‘please’ very nicely they’ll give him a letter from his mother.  It’s always from his mother.  His father ’cannot trust himself to write in a Christian spirit,’ he says.  In the letter is a pound order.  That’s to keep body and soul together.”

In his passion of self-pity he forgot to stammer; his words tumbled out wildly, between sobbing catches of his breath.