ing to happen, and none of us are to say anything
about it.

What a deceiver I am, though! I put it all down to my unselfish love for
Martin. It would be such a blow to him--disturbing his plans, upsetting
everything, perhaps causing him to postpone his Expedition, or even to
abandon it altogether. "Let the truth fall soft on him. He'll see it
soon enough. Don't let us be cruel."

The dear sweet, unsuspecting old darlings have taken it all in--all my
vain and cowardly selfishness. I am to play the part of pretending to
fall in with Martin's plans, and they are to stand by and say nothing.

Can I do it? I wonder, I wonder!

* * * * *

JULY 15. I am becoming quite a great actress! It's astonishing to see
how I develop my deceptions under all sorts of veils and disguises.

Martin told me to-day that he had given up the idea of leaving me at
Wellington and had determined to take me on to Winter Quarters, having
met, on the way to Windsor, some great specialist in my kind of malady
(I wonder how much he knows of it), who declared that the climate of the
Antarctic would act on me like magic.

Such glorious sunshine in summer! Such crisp, dry, stimulating air! New
life with every breath! Such a stunning little house, too, so cosy and
comfortable! And then the men whom he would leave behind while he
slipped down South--they would worship me!

"How splendid! How glorious!" I cried. "How delightful to be mistress
over a houseful of big, hungry, healthy boys, who come in out of the
snow and want to eat up everything!"

Sometimes I feel myself being carried away by my own acting, and then I
see the others (Christian Ann and the old doctor and Father Dan)
dropping their heads or stealing out of the room.

I wish I were not so weak. I feel no pain whatever. Only this
temperature during the nights and the ever-deepening exhaustion in the
mornings.

* * * * *

JULY 16. I am keeping it up! To-day I was alone with Martin for a long
hour in the garden-house. Weather soft and beautiful, the heavens blue,
and gleams of sunshine coming through the trellis-work.

Merely to sit beside my darling with his odour of health is to feel a
flood of bodily strength coursing through me, enough to make me forget
that I am a frail thing myself, who could be blown away by a puff of
wind. But to hear him talk on his own subject is to be lifted up to the
highest reaches of the sou