Now his mind was made up, he felt weakness leave him. Trouble never nagged when there was work to do. The horse waited to be saddled at the bottom of the hill, which task he did with the speed of long custom. He had chosen for the day's work the little chestnut mare which carried him from Surprise the night he met Moll Gregory. He had chosen well, for she was staunch and willing—without airs and fancies. Once he turned her towards the river, she held the way like a prim Miss travelling to school.
The sky was green as he came down the hill; colour faded from it; darkness fell upon the whole country. The stars took their places in the sky, and began the slow turning which he had watched so many years now that they told him the month and the hour as might a clock.
The breeze had lessened to a tremble as he climbed down to the plain, and the night clapped a warm breath upon him. Distant summer lightnings flicked across the lower skies. The feet of the stepping mare trod evenly upon the pebbles and on the bare earth. He chose her often for the day's work because of the speed of her walk; but to-night she seemed turned sluggard to enrage him. Yet the road was falling behind. The hill he had climbed was far over his shoulder. The Conical Hill of Surprise had risen on the horizon. Now the green belt of timber was hinted at a few miles ahead. Now he saw it with distinctness. Thought took hold of him again until he found himself in the desolate strip of country where the floods ran in the rains. The warm night was wrapped about him. Crickets shrilled everywhere. Several times sounded the thump of startled kangaroos. Lightnings flickered without pause above the outline of the hills. It seemed to him he was part of great music working in crescendo.
Here was the Pool. He knew it was the Pool; but it was too dark to discover the waters. She lived here. He would see her in a few moments. He would see her. He would see her in a moment. He lived through the long day that he might see her a little while in the night. He would see her again when this slow beast had trodden a little farther.
Suddenly he grew cold with such a greediness of cold as the passion of the tropic night could not appease. He had come to say good-bye. In half-an-hour he would be moving away from the Pool, nevermore while she lived there to ride that way. He could not do that. No, not he. He was but a man. His shaking body was a man's body. He was unworthy to be battleground of contending right and wrong. Not to-night. He could not make an end to-night. To-morrow, but not to-day.... A moment ago he rode by the beginning of the Pool, and now he passed the castor-oil tree. The trees were breaking apart. There stood the hut and the tents.
From a chaos of fancies he presently took hold upon realization. In the doorway of the hut, looking towards him through the dark, stood Moll Gregory. Lamplight from inside passed her and pierced the night with a long beam. She held an empty basin in her hands. The dark was clear to him who had ridden half-a-dozen miles through it; but she looked before her in a puzzled way.
"Is that you, Mr. Power?"
"Yes, Molly."
He believed he shook when he spoke to her. She was a draught of water, chilled by snows from high peaks, offered into the hands of a dying man. How she impassioned the night with her loveliness. He would never find her beauty staling, though he looked on her for ever. All the moments of a day brought new emotions watching from her eyes, new passions sitting upon her lips. He never knew how holy beauty might be until he looked upon her. How the light shone on her brown hair, lying coiled on her head and brooding round her brows.
He found he had pulled up the mare in the doorway.