rience the undeniable analogy between a chaffed and
irate Doctor and a baited Spanish bull, goaded by the stab of the gaudy
paper-flagged dart in his thick neck, and bewildered by the subsequent
explosion of the cracker. He only wanted a tail to lash, she mentally
said, and had pigeon-holed the joke for Bingo when it became none.

"Do, please, forgive me!... What you must think of me!..." she began
contritely.

Repentance gave place to resentment. Saxham, without even an abrupt
inclination of the head, had swung about and left her. She saw the
heavily-shouldered, muscularly-built figure crossing the drift a little
way down, stepping from boulder to boulder with those curiously small,
neat feet, twirling his old horn-handled hunting-crop as he went, with a
decidedly vicious swish of the doubled thong. Now he was knee-deep in the
reeds of the north shore; now he was climbing the bank. A black-and-white
crow flew up heavily, and was lost among the intertwining branches of the
oaks and the blue-gums, and a cloud of finches and linnets rose as the
covert of tree-fern and cactus and tall grass, knitted with thorny-stemmed
creeper, received him and swallowed him. She saw by the shaking of the
foliage that he turned up the stream, and then no more of him.
Feather-headed idiot that she had been! Inconsiderate wretch! How, in
Heaven's name, after reminding the man of the perfidy of that underbred
_passee_ little person with the passion for French novels and sulphonal
tabloids, who had thrown the Doctor over, years before, in favour of his
brother the Dragoon--how could she have charged him with being a victim to
the charms of another young woman? If Mrs. David's desertion rankled
still, as no doubt it did, there being no accounting for masculine taste,
he would, of course, resent the accusation almost as an insult. Men were
such Conservatives in love. And, besides, she had just been telling him
about the child. She loathed herself for having perpetrated such a
blunder. Saxham had murdered politeness by quitting her abruptly; but
hadn't she deserved the snub? She deserved snubbing. She would go, for the
health of her soul, and talk to dearest Biddy, who always made you feel
even smaller than you had thought yourself before.

She stood up, shaking the sand-grams and grass-burrs from her dress and
the folds of the white umbrella. It was nearing six o'clock. The heat was
lessening, and the pale turquoise sky overhead was flecked and