"And now?" he said.
She took one step, and laid her warm hands upon his arms, and looked up at him with flaming face, with quivering lips, with streaming eyes. "And now," she whispered, "I am ready to undo the past——"
"Indeed!"
"To make amends—to keep my broken word!"
He looked at her a moment longer, and his look was very soft. He had heard her singing, but neither the song nor the voice had done more than remind him of her. And yet the mere reminder had carried him through the township with a live cheque in his pocket—had kept him sitting up all night with his false love's image once more unveiled in his heart. Here by a miracle was his love herself; she loved him now—now that she had made him unworthy of her love! Little wonder that he looked softly at her for a moment more; and the next, still less wonder that he flung those hot hands from him, and kicked the box from under his foot, and recoiled with a mocking laugh from the love that had come too late.
"Keep what you like," he cried out with a brutal bitterness; "only keep your pity to yourself! You should require it. I don't."
And the girl was still staring at him, in a dumb agony, an exquisite torture, when the smack of a riding-whip resounded on the corrugated roof, and the eyes of both flew to the door.
IV
A horse's mane and withers, rubbed by the rider's beard as he stooped to peer into the hut, deepened the grey dusk within and made the lamp burn brighter. Then came the squatter's voice, in tremulous, forced tones, as of a man who can ill trust himself to speak.