Ten o’clock struck.  “For God’s sake, let us get out of this, Nellie!” cried Ned, as the ringing bell-notes roused him.

“Have you had enough of Sydney?” she asked, leading the way out.

“I’ve had enough of every place,” he answered hotly.  She did not say any more.

As they stood in George-street, waiting for their ’bus, a high-heeled, tightly-corsetted, gaily-hatted larrikiness flounced out of the side door of a hotel near by.  A couple of larrikin acquaintances were standing there, shrivelled young men in high-heeled pointed-toed shoes, belled trousers, gaudy neckties and round soft hats tipped over the left ear.

“Hello, you blokes!” cried the larrikiness, slapping one on the shoulder.  “Isn’t this a blank of a time you’re having?”

It was her ideal of pleasure, hers and theirs, to parade the street or stand in it, to gape or be gaped at.

CHAPTER V.

WERE THEY CONSPIRATORS?

Neither Ned nor Nellie spoke as they journeyed down George street in the rumbling ’bus.  “I’ve got tickets,” was all she said as they entered the ferry shed at the Circular Quay.  They climbed to the upper deck of the ferry boat in silence.  He got up when she did and went ashore by her side without a word.  He did not notice the glittering lights that encircled the murky night.  He did not even know if it were wet or fine, or whether the moon shone or not.  He was in a daze.  The horrors of living stunned him.  The miseries of poor Humanity choked him.  The foul air of these noisome streets sickened him.  The wretched faces he had seen haunted him.  The oaths of the gutter children and the wailing of the blind beggar-girl seemed to mingle in a shriek that shook his very soul.

If he could have persuaded himself that the bush had none of this, it would have been different.  But he could not.  The stench of the stifling shearing-sheds and of the crowded sleeping huts where men are packed in rows like trucked sheep came to him with the sickening smell of the slums.  On the faces of men in the bush he had seen again and again that hopeless look as of goaded oxen straining through a mud-hole, that utter degradation, that humble plea for charity.  He had known them in Western Queensland often in spite of all that was said of the free, brave bush.  It was not new to him, this dark side of life; that was the worst of it.  It had been all along and he had known that it had been, but never before had he understood the significance of it, never before had he realised how utterly civilisation has failed.  And this was what crushed him—­the hopelessness of it all, the black despair that seemed to fill the universe, the brutal weariness of living, the ceaseless round of sorrow and sin and shame and unspeakable misery.