breathe freely now."

"I don't believe it," she said quickly. "Mothers and fathers are not
like that."

"That's all you know. All day to-day, after she got back from Tilbury
and had powdered the traces of tears from her face she'd be at Harrods
or the Stores, buying things. And she'd take just as much interest in
matching some silks for embroidery, and getting the exact flavour of
cheese the Pater likes as she took in making me promise not to drink.
And to-morrow her friends will come, with an air of a funeral about
them, and be discreetly sympathetic about the terrible trouble she has
been having with Louis--such a pity--after he promised so well! Oh be
damned to them all! I'm not going to care any more."

Marcella sat in miserable silence. She did not know enough to say
anything helpful. She had no idea what had cured her father. She had
seen him a drunkard; she had seen him ill, no longer a drunkard; she had
seen him die and guessed dimly that the drinking had killed him. But she
suddenly grasped the fact that she had seen effects--whole years of
effects; of causes she knew nothing whatever.

The mandoline began to play again "La Donna e Mobile." Louis's voice
broke into the music and the lashing water.

"They're cowards, my people, mean little cowards. That's why I'm a
coward! I'm a beastly, bally sort of half-breed, don't you know! Do you
know why they give me a pound a week? Partly, of course, it's to bribe
me to keep away. They've no other weapon but that. But mostly it's
because they're so miserably sentimental they can't bear to think of me
starving or sleeping out all night! Ough! If they weren't such miserable
cowards they'd know I'd be better dead than chained to the end of a row
of pound-notes. They'd have kicked me out, and let me either buck up or
die."

"But--oh, I do wish Dr. Angus or Wullie were here! I know there's an
answer to all that, but I'm such an idiot I can't find it," she cried
despairingly.

"I'll do them! I'll get my own back on them! I'm damned if I'll do as
they expect me to. If they'd only seen me last time in Auckland," and he
gave an ugly laugh. "Do you think I lived on their bally pound a week?
Why, I spent that in half a day! Sometimes I wouldn't call for it for
five weeks. I'd go past the Post Office every day, knowing it was there,
and torturing myself with the thought of what I could buy with it, and
leaving it there till I'd got five pounds and could drink myself to
hel