'And the woman?'
He turned upon her again with genuine surprise. 'The woman! The woman!' he cried. 'It has nothing to do with a woman. Upon my soul, no! Something has been revealed to me that has hit me hard. I don't get over it easily; it clings in my mind. If I could tell you, old girl, you'd sympathize; but I can't—the secret is not my own.' He spoke with emotion, and Aurora, watching him sharply, was touched. She put a hand on his arm.
'Not another word, Jimmy,' she said. 'I won't bother you. Sure,' she continued lightly, we weemin 're niver contint wid the throubles of the day. We're that curious we must be wonderin' how much more's comin'. We may boast iv bein' sensible an' sthrong, but we're alwiz pushin' our tentacles out to feel the sorrow iv to-morrow. I reckoned you'd be hatin' me in a week, ma bouchal.'
Done felt himself justified in kissing her there and then, but the kiss partook a good deal of the nature of a benediction.
This explanation did not serve to restore confidence; the constraint remained, and increased with time. Jim noted its effect on Aurora with some misgiving. His appearance in the tent was the signal for a display of boisterous animation on her part. If she had been depressed before, she suddenly became gay; if she had been animated, she became jubilant. She sang, and joked, and danced, and played, with an excess of jocosity that jarred him painfully. He gave her credit for uncommon intelligence, and undoubtedly she had been educated above the position in life she was content to occupy. Why should she resort to the shallow and obvious subterfuges of the most foolish and frivolous of her sex? He had no perception of the extent of her sufferings, and would not, in any case, have understood how independent are the workings of the head and the heart of a loving woman. On such occasions she flirted audaciously with the miners, and her blood burned in her veins because Done showed no disposition to be moved by it.
Tim Carrol imagined himself to be the specially favoured man, and was Aurora's most devoted slave, and the girl played upon his big, affectionate heart, with no object but to awaken in Done a sparkle of the recent fire. One night Aurora danced with him through a lively reel, and at its conclusion, in a spirit of mirthless mischief, put up her red mouth to be kissed. Not for all the powers of good and evil would Tim have foregone that delight. He kissed her, but this time Done offered no objection. Indeed, he gave no indication of having seen what was passing, although in reality he had been watching Aurora, impressed with the idea that she was drinking. Never since the first night he met her had she seemed to him to be under the influence of drink, and he admitted to himself that he might have been mistaken then, and was probably deceived now by the fervour of her character.
Done's indifference struck a chill to the girl's heart. She went back to her place silent, but feeling within her the stirring of a tempest. A quarter of an hour later she confronted Jim as he stood talking with Harry Peetree. For a moment she looked into his face, and all eyes were upon her. Then she struck him in the mouth with her right hand, and her eyes, cheeks, and whole being seemed to blaze into passion at the same moment.
'I have something belonging to you. Is it that you are waiting for?' She threw the small nugget in his face with her other hand.
The gold cut his temple, but he did not flinch; his eyes met hers without passion; his cultivated power of control helped him now. Taking out a handkerchief, he wiped the blood from his eye, and then, picking up the nugget, offered it to her.
'Aurora,' he said, 'you know in your heart that is a lie.'