'No, they are not. Only when we see a great danger, the very fact that we see it shows we may try to avoid it.' His voice almost failed him once or twice, for there was something in her tone and manner, even more than in her words, which confirmed his worst fears.
'You still keep up your old habit of taking a book with you when you go out,' he said presently, in a lighter tone.
'Yes, but I cannot read; is it not strange?' she said, looking at him with wide-opened eyes.
'Ah, these times come to one,' he answered. 'Now I am going to tell you something about myself—may I?'
'Oh, of course,' she said, with more animation than she had yet shown.
'Well, I have finished that treatise I was writing at Minjah—about the conditions of factory labour. There is some other work I want to do; and, besides, I have gone quite blunt over the thing. The facts, and I believe their inferences, are correct; but the style I am sure is odious. Now, will you go over the MS. for me?'
It was some little time before she spoke, and then it was in a hesitating, broken way, which was quite foreign to her old, quick, spontaneous manner.
'I would be so glad to do it, but I lose things so dreadfully—things I have been thinking of. It is as though—I hardly know how to explain it—as if I came on blank spaces in my mind. Words and thoughts drop away out of reach quite suddenly. I am almost afraid to speak to people, lest I might not know what they say. I was afraid even of you. And yet how kind you have always been—except that one letter. But it was because it was wickedly—hurt—and the other one I never got. No, I never got it—never.'
'But about this work I want you to do for me, Stella?' he answered. The clear, harmonious intonations of his voice were lost in a constrained huskiness; but though his heart was throbbing wildly with fierce and contending emotions, his self-possession was outwardly unbroken. 'It is very important I should get the help of some friend; and there is no one whose aid I care to ask but yours. It does not in the least matter about your taking a long while over it. Do only a page or two at a time.'
'I will try to do it: but I will not let anyone see it, for fear it may be wrong. I will try not to make mistakes; but I do not know. It is what you were writing at Lullaboolagana?'