ain--this last
alas! an improbable eventuality. Alexander and Roxalana were champing
their bits. Ninnis in a new cabbage-tree hat and clean puggaree,
wearing the light coat he only put on when in the society of ladies he
wished to honour, was standing by the front wheels examining the lash
of his driving-whip. McKeith had given him his last directions. There
was nothing now to wait for. McKeith went slowly up the steps of the
back veranda, and in at the French window of the sitting room, where
Bridget had been watching, waiting. At his appearance, she went back
into the room. She stood quite still, small, shadowy, the little bit of
her face which showed between the folds of her motor veil, where it was
tied down under her chin--very pale, and the eyes within their red,
narrowed lids, dry and bright.

'Are you ready, Bridget?' he asked.

'Yes.'

He came close, and took a little bag she was holding out of her hands,
carried it to the back veranda, and told one of the Chinamen to give it
to Mr Ninnis--all, it seemed to her, to evade farewells. She called him
back in a hard voice.

'Colin--I've left my keys,'--pointing to a sealed and addressed
envelope on her own writing-table. 'There are a few things of
value--some you have given me--in the drawers.'

'I will take care of them,' he answered hoarsely.

They stood fronting each other, and their eyes both smarting, agonised,
stared at each other out of the pale drawn faces.

'Colin,' she said; and held out her hands. 'Aren't you going to say
good-bye?'

He took her hands; his burning look met hers for an instant and
dropped. There was always the poisonous wall which their soul's vision
might not pierce--through which their yearning lips might not touch.
For an instant too, the hardness of his face was broken by a spasm of
emotion. The grip of his hands on hers was like that of a steel vice;
she winced at the pain of it. He dropped her hands suddenly, and moved
back a step.

'Good-bye--Bridget.'

'Is that all you have to say? All?'

He stuttered, helplessly. 'I--I--can't.... There's nothing to say.'

'Nothing! You let me go--like this--without one word of apology--of
regret. I think that, at least, you owe me--courtesy.'

Her tone lashed him. He seemed to be struggling with his tongue-tied
speech. When words came they rushed out in fierce jerks. 'I'll say
this--though where's the good of talking.... What does it amount to
anyway, when you're down on the bedr