dget hotly.

McKeith stopped in the act of filling his tobacco pouch from a jar on
the mantelpiece and looked sharply at his wife.

'You think that, Biddy. I remember long ago you said something of that
sort to me. It isn't my idea of morality or of justice. But I'm one
with you this far. If I'd ever reason to believe that you loved another
man and wanted to go off with him--you might go--I wouldn't put out a
hand to stop you. And then....'

'And then?' She had grown very white.

'Well, I think I'd make another notch in my gun first--and it would be
a previous one--for myself that time.'

'No, you wouldn't, Colin. Because you know I shouldn't be worth it--and
you are not the man to funk.'

'I'm not. But where YOU come in--Good Lord! Mate! What would there be
left for me to live for?'

Her heart thrilled to the old term of endearment, to which in their
early honeymoon days she had attached a sentimental value. Of late it
had fallen into disuse, and when she had heard him on occasions greet
the foreman, may be of some stray party of drivers or surveyors with
the bush formula: 'Good day, mate!' she had felt with deep aggrievement
that she no longer desired the appellative. She had not yet realised
that while the word 'mate' in Australese, like the verb AIMER in
French, may be used as a mere colloquial term, it implies in the deeper
sense a sanctity of relation upon which hangs the whole code of Bush
chivalry.

'Oh, Colin!' Her eyes glistened with tears. She felt ashamed of her
neurotic fancies and her resentment of his lacks in the matter of
conventional courtesies--of his outward hardness, his want of sympathy
with her ideals.

He came to her, taking her two hands while keeping his pipe in one of
his own so that the whiff of the coarse 'Store-cut' tobacco made her
wrinkle her nose and stemmed the tide of emotion. But he did not seem
to notice this.

'No, you're not going to put that theory into practice, Mate.... I'm
not afraid. So we'll leave it at that. And now what's this about the
black-boy to do with my being unjust to that Organiser? There's no
beastly sentiment in his case. He's out to make money, that's all.'

'You won't hear what he's got to put forward on his side any more than
you would listen to poor Wombo.'

'No, I won't. I'm not taking any--either in gins or in organisers. Let
'em show their faces here, and they'll pretty soon become aware of the
fact.'

Lady Bridget took away her hands and