f. She felt that there was something
rather disgraceful in wishing Louis were there to kiss her; something a
little humiliating in longing so utterly that to-morrow might come when
they could be together.

"I never, never, never thought I'd be such an idiot! I thought I'd fall
in love with a king, or something--Oh my goodness, what a mess!" Her
father came into her mind, striding giant-like over Ben Grief in his
shabby old tweeds; she frowned and bit her lips and told herself, in
bewilderment, that if only Louis had been like him she would have
married him without any feeling of humiliation. And she had the
uncomfortable feeling that, had her father been alive, she would never
have dared to marry Louis. Andrew would have put him in the sea, or
something equally final and ignominious.

She stared fixedly at the rippling water, with tight lips, and nodded
her head at it.

"Yes, it's perfectly disgusting. It's degrading--it's--it's beastly to
be shutting myself up like this with a drunken man. I believe I'd be
better dead--from a selfish point of view--"

Next minute her eyes softened.

"But think how eager he is--what a boy he is--like Jimmy! And how he
trusts me not to let those awful miseries happen to him any more."

She turned round, shook herself together and began to march back to the
ship, her father's eyes shining through hers for a while.

"Marcella Lashcairn," she said solemnly, "you're going to stop asking
yourself rude questions for ever and ever, Amen! You haven't time to
waste on introspection. You love him. That's a good thing, anyway. Never
mind how you love him, never mind if it's a John the Baptist love or a
mother love or a fever produced by the tropics, as Wullie said, you've
to do things as best you can and understand them afterwards, just
trusting that God will burn out all the beastliness of them in the end.
And--" she added, as an afterthought, "If he gets drunk I'll shake the
life out of him."

If Louis had seen her just then he would probably have shied at marrying
her.

She went on board to a deserted ship, hating to stay ashore without
Louis. Even the passengers who were going on to Brisbane had gone to
sleep ashore. Knollys told her that Jimmy had cried desperately because
he was being taken away from her, and that Mr. Peters was drunk in his
grief at ending his acquaintanceship with Mrs. Hetherington. Later,
seeing her standing lonely on deck, watching the lighted ferries go by,
K