would have to put up with if she were going to be with me. Then you can
judge whether or not I'm right in the decision I have come to as the
result of my thinkings. You can tell my wife as much as you please--of
the details, I mean. Perhaps, you had better soften them to her, for
you know as well as I do--or better--that her impulsive, quixotic
disposition might lead her into worse mistakes than it has done
already. Of course, she'll have to know my decision. I am sure that if
she allows her reason play, she will agree it is the only possible one.

I'm not going to talk about what happened before she went away, or
about that evidence--or anything else in that immediate connection. I
was mad, and I expect I believed a lot more than was true. I don't
believe--I don't think I ever did really believe--what I suppose you
would call 'the worst.' But that doesn't seem to me of such great
matter. It's the spirit, not the letter that counts. The foundation
must have been rotten, or there never would have been a question of
believing one way or the other--because we should have UNDERSTOOD.
Explanations would not have been needed between true mates. Only we
were not true mates--that's the whole point. There was too great a
radical difference between us. It might have been a deal better if she
HAD gone off with that man.

But to come now to the practical part of the situation. You know enough
about Australian ups and downs to realise that a cattle or sheep owner
out West, may be potentially wealthy one season and on the fair road to
beggary the next. It will be different when times change and we take to
sinking artesian bores on the same principle as when Joseph stored up
grain in the fat years in Egypt against the lean ones that were coming.
That's what I meant to do and ought to have done at any cost. But--well
I just didn't.

The thing is that if I could have looked ahead, perhaps even six
months, I might not have thought it acting on the square to a woman to
get her to marry me. If I could have looked a year ahead, I wouldn't
have had any doubt on the subject.

But you see I justified it to myself. One thousand square miles of
country--fine grazing land most of it, so long as the creeks kept
running--and no more than eleven thousand head of stock upon it,
seemed, with decent luck, a safe enough proposition, though you'll
remember I was a bit doubtful that day on your veranda at Emu Point,
when we talked about my marrying.