.

"Don't!" she cried. "Don't! You must not--never--never--I told you I
would not have you speak to me of--I must not hear such things. I----"

He was by her side, his two hands clasping hers.

"Nora, I must. Darling, I love you. I cannot bear to see----"

She pushed him back, flinging her hands free from his grasp, to clasp
and press them to her bosom as though to still the great heaving gasps
which made it rise and fall in tumultuous spasms.

"Mr. Durham! You forget!"

Her voice fell like a whip-lash, cold, haughty, stern.

"I forbid you ever to speak to me so again. Good night."

She swept past him and entered the house, closing the door after her.

Hours passed before he could obtain control over his thoughts, before he
could face the blackness her rejection of his declaration had brought
upon him. Then he rose and stood staring blankly out over the sombre
mystery of the bush, long since bereft of the faint glimmer of the
new-born moon, veiled in shade, silent as the thin wisps of filmy mist
which floated in the still air along the course of Waroona Creek.

In the morning Mrs. Burke met him without a trace in her voice, face, or
manner of the resentful indignation she had shown on the previous night.
She talked, as she had talked on many a morning at the breakfast-table,
with an uninterrupted flow of chatter, inconsequential, airy, frivolous.
She met his eyes openly, frankly, without a glimmer to show she noticed
the lines which furrowed his face. Yet they were so marked that when
Brennan drove out for him later, he glanced at his superior officer with
apprehension.

"Do you think you are well enough to return to duty, sir?" he asked.
"You don't look half so well as you did yesterday, and you were not
looking too well then. If a few more days' rest----"

"Oh, I'm very fit, Brennan," Durham interrupted. "You had better turn
the horses out for an hour or so; Mrs. Burke insists on my waiting to
have lunch before I go."

Mrs. Burke came out to them as they stood talking.

"Oh, Brennan, did you see old Patsy in the town?" she exclaimed.

"Why, he was here this morning," Durham said.

"Excuse me, Mr. Durham, he was not. You remember what I told you last
night. I did not care to say then, but the old man was very strange in
his manner before dinner, and I believed he had had drink. I spoke to
him about it, and I have not seen him since."

"But--who got breakfast ready?" Durham asked sharply.

"I did my