'Please.'
But she paused, the tongs balanced in her delicate fingers.
'It is frightfully thrilling—life in the Bush.'
'What part of it? The shooting or the flogging?'
She burst out: 'You know I hated that. You know I was furious about the flogging. You know'—She pulled herself up.
'I know nothing—except that you must have changed enormously in a very short time to have been thrilled with anything but horror—by that sort of thing.'
'Yes, I have changed. But it isn't time that changes one. Time never counts with me. It's only feeling that counts. Oh, of course, I think it all horrible—about the Blacks up North. They're not allowed on this station—except one or two half civilised stock-boys—and this one fell in love and carried off his gin, and brought her here against my husband's orders.'
'Yes? And you had befriended them—I gathered that. But it doesn't explain YOU.'
She took up a piece of sugar with the tongs, holding it suspended as she spoke, jerkily.
'Why should I be explained? As for my finding life in the Bush thrilling.... I was dead sick of falsities when I left England, I wanted to be thrilled by something real.'