'How tiresomely exact you are, Joan! Of course, they were different. Everybody is different from everybody else. And I attract marked types. Will was more marked and more attractive—as well as attracted—that's all.'
'His attraction doesn't seem to have been as strong as self-interest, any way,' said Joan, with deliberate terseness.
The girl's small, pale face flushed to deep crimson for a moment.
'Joan, you are cruel! You know that was the sting! And it wouldn't have stung so if I hadn't cared. Sometimes I feel the maddest desire to hurt him—to pay him out. I never felt like that about any of the others—the ones I really did ALMOST want to marry. And then—at other times I'd give ANYTHING just to have him again as he used to be.'
'I'm certain you weren't really in love with him,' exclaimed Mrs Gildea.
Bridget seemed to be considering. 'Wasn't I?—I'm not so sure of that. No—' she went on impetuously, 'I was not REALLY in love with him. He had a magnetic influence over me as I told you. Perhaps I might get a little under it again if he were to appear suddenly without his wife—it turns me sick to think of a married man having a magnetic influence over me.... Even if there was no wife—now. So, when you've idealised a person and can't idealise him any more: C'EST FINI. There's nothing but a ghost to come and make you uncomfortable sometimes—and that CAN'T last.... Besides, I've been breathing the strong clear air of your gum trees lately. It's a case of pull devil—pull bushman. Do you see?'
'I see, my dear, that you're idealising Colin McKeith, and let me tell you that a bushman is very far removed from the super-man. Oh, Colin is a fine enough specimen of a pioneer in a rough country. But his rough life, his bush surroundings, and all the rest—why, he'd jar upon you in a hundred ways if you were alone with him in them. Then—he's not of your order—though I hate the phrase and I hate the kind of man. All the same, Biddy, you may pretend to despise the men of your own class, but I fancy that, after a spell of roughing it with Colin on the Upper Leura, you'd hanker after something in them that Colin hasn't and never will have.... And then,' Joan's swift imagination carried her on with a rush, 'you don't know in the least the type of man he is. You'd have to give in to him: he'd never give in to you. He's domineering, jealous, vindictive and reserved. Before a month was out you'd quarrel, and there would be no chance of your ever making it up again.'
'I must say, Joan, that for a friend of his you're not an enthusiastic advocate.'
'It's because I'm so fond of Colin that I hate the thought of your making him miserable. Anyway, however, you're bound to do that.'
'I don't see why.'