"I shall require nothing," he said brusquely. "I shall be away before you are awake. I am merely staying to set your mind at rest on the question of the house being visited and robbed. Don't let me disturb you—or detain you."
She bent her head slowly and gracefully.
"As you will," she replied in a gentle voice. "Good night, Mr. Durham."
Without waiting for a reply she turned and went from the room, closing the door quietly after her.
He stood where she had left him, staring fixedly at the closed door.
"I was a fool to come, a greater fool to speak," he muttered savagely. "What satisfaction is there in knowing who she is, when——"
He swung round petulantly, diving his hand into his pocket for a pipe. When it was filled and lighted, he dragged his chair out on to the verandah, lowered the lamp flame to a glimmer, pushed-to the window, and lay back in the chair, blowing furious clouds of smoke out upon the night and staring, with unseeing eyes, into the dark.
But always before him there floated the vision of the speaking grey-blue eyes looking at him from the shelter of their dark-fringed lashes; always in his brain he heard the gentle melody of her voice as she had last spoken to him, and always there came to taunt and goad him the jarring memory of the half-mocking way in which she had pushed back upon himself the frank revelation he had made. But though it jarred, it had no power to lessen the fascination she exercised over him. Despite her rebuff, despite the seeming hopelessness of his infatuation, it held him. The more he tried to force it back, the stronger it grew; the greater, the more beautiful and more lovable did Mrs. Burke appear to be.
The jarring note passed from his memory. Under the soothing quiet of the night and the stillness of the bush, looming dark and mysterious against the sky, scarcely less sombre with only the light of the stars to illumine it, his fancy was filled with the image he had carried in his mind for so many months. The weariness of an arduous day added its softening influence, and he drifted out upon the sea of dreams and thence into a deep slumber, while yet his pipe was unfinished.