of it;
for sometimes I was too weary to think; too weary even to dream of you.
And it was sad business dreaming of you, Ida; for, you see, there was
the waking!"

"Do I not know!" she murmured, with something like a sob, and her hand
closed on his shoulder.

"My employer was a pleasant, genial man, my fellow-labourers were good
fellows; I could have been happy, or, at least, contented with the
life, hard as it was, if I could but have forgotten; if I could even
for a day have lost the awful hunger and thirst for you; if I could
have got you out of my mind, the memory of you out of my heart--but I
could not!"

He paused, looking straight before him; and gazing up at him, she saw
his face drawn and haggard, as if he still thought himself separated
from her. Then, as if he remembered, he looked down at her and caught
her to him with a sudden violence that almost hurt her.

"But I could not; you haunted me, dearest, all day and all night!
Sometimes, when the men were singing round the camp fire, singing and
laughing, the sense of my loss would come crushing down upon me, and
I'd spring to my feet and wander out into the starlit silence of the
vast plains and spend the night thinking of all that had passed between
us. At other times, a kind of madness would catch hold of me, and I'd
join the wildest of the gangs, and laugh and sing and drink with the
maddest of the lot."

She drew a long breath of comprehension and pity, and hid her eyes on
his breast. He bent and kissed her, murmuring penitently:

"I'm not fit to kiss you, Ida. I did not mean to tell you, but--but, I
can't keep anything from you, even though it will go against me. One
night the drinking led to fighting and I stood up to a son of Anak, a
giant of a fellow; and we fought until both of us were knocked out; but
I remember him going down first, just before I fell, I went from bad to
worse. The owner of the run--it was called Salisbury Plain--spoke a
word of warning, and I tried to pull up, tried to take to the work
again, and forget myself in it; but--ah, well, dearest, thank God you
would not understand that you cannot know what a man is like when he is
at odds with fate, and is bed-fellow with despair!"

"Do I not!" she murmured again, with the fullest understanding and
compassion. "Do you think he is worse than a woman. On, Stafford, there
have been times, black times, when I learned to know why some women fly
to drink to drown their misery: and our