is boyishness
was abandoned: she acknowledged her master with an exuberant rapture that
had not the faintest suspicion of coyness, and although Jim often blushed
under it, and experienced a great uneasiness in the course of a public
demonstration, Aurora showed a barbaric disregard for contemporary
opinion. She felt no shame in the presence of her emotions, and
consequently had no impulse to hide them. She beguiled Jim from his work
to take long rambles; she devoted herself to him, to the neglect of Mrs.
Ben Kyley's patrons.

Mike Burton was often lonely in his tent, and often Mrs. Kyley stormed at
Jim, highly vociferous and wildly pantomimic, but good-natured and
sympathetic at bottom, for there was a vagabondish harmony between the
two women that made them fast friends, and caused Mary Kyley to feel a
share in Aurora's happiness.

The writing of the letter to Lucy Woodrow was now indefinitely postponed,
and Jim found himself reluctant to open the box containing Lucy's locket.
When his hand fell upon it by chance he put it by hastily, as if it were
just possible that the face in the trinket might force itself upon his
attention. He never lived to understand this fugitive idea, for the
thoughts were cast aside just as hastily, and with an absurd touch of
impatience.

The young man had given himself up to Aurora's influence. The plenitude
and the ardour of her love carried him along; he felt at times like a
twig in a torrent, but the sensation was luxurious, and another joy of
life was with him. He opened wide arms to it. Once again he saw the world
with new eyes, and for having despised and mistrusted it so found it the
more adorable. He squared his shoulders and experienced a curious
sensation of physical growth and accrued manhood. Two years ago he might
have weighed his feelings for Aurora and hers for him, and sought out
motives; to-day he went along the flow of life, unresisting, with a
leaping heart, and had he been questioned would have said that not he but
the world had changed.

Mike Burton watched the development of events in a judicial way, without
offering any comment. There had not been a waste month in his life for as
long as he could remember. In spite of his busy days and his Bush
breeding, he had been much in touch with the humanities, and he knew men
and women well enough to expect no startling surprises from them; but Jim
was a curiosity. With a certain robustness of character, no little
knowledg