efused to take
any. Marcella refused to go without some. Finally she packed the New
Testament, "Parsifal" and the cookery book inside her swag. Later,
opening all her books to write her name in them before leaving them on
the shelf downstairs for the use of Mrs. King's "boys," she noticed the
gipsy woman's prophecy in the title page of "Questing Cells" and took
that along too.

For the last time, they slept on the roof; as soon as Louis was asleep
and Marcella lying quiet beside him, she had a visitation of her dreams
about drunkards' children. Creeping from under the blankets silently,
she walked right along the roof in the moonlight to have the matter out
with herself once and for all. She did not want to take bad dreams away
to a new life with her.

"I won't believe it. What's more, I _don't_ believe it," she said
decidedly. "Louis may be a drunkard. Father was. So were all the
Lashcairns for ages. But I'm not. And my child is not going to be. After
all--_is_ he our child--? I mean--Jesus was not Joseph's child--only--"

She stopped, waiting. This was an immense, breathtaking thought.

"Just his body is made by Louis and me--and all the rest of him
comes--new--quite new. The spirit--the quickening spirit--"

She felt, once more, as if her feet were taking wings with the
hopefulness of this thought.

"Why that's what the Catholics mean by Immaculate Conception! Of course
it is! Why--it's all Immaculate Conception! How on earth could it,
logically, be anything else?"

She went back, then, and lay down very still. Louis lay white and quiet
in the moonlight.

"You may hurt him, Louis, if I happen to die. Not that I intend to, for
one small instant! You may let him be hungry and cold. But you won't
hurt him inside. I'll see to it that there's strength in him--the
quickening spirit."

Her last sleep in Sydney was dreamless.

CHAPTER XXI

Even the two days' journey in the most uncomfortable train on earth
could not damp their ardour. Most of the time Louis was gay and
unusually chivalrous; at night, tiredness and heat cracked his nerves a
little, making him cross and cynical until, sitting bolt upright on the
wooden seat, she drew his head on her knee and stroked his eyes with
softened fingers till he fell asleep. At the stations where they
alighted to stretch cramped limbs she stayed beside him all the time.
Once, by a specious excuse, he tried to get rid of her, but she saw
through it and stayed bes