on his tongue to suggest that it was easy to compromise, but there was
that about her which checked him. Above all things there was a
naturalness about her, an absence of artificiality, the emanation of a
strong and vigorous womanliness. The very freedom of her speech was
purity itself. The dark places of life had been bared to her and she did
not conceal the fact or minimise it but she spoke of it as something
outside of herself, as not affecting her excepting that it roused in her
an intense sympathy. She was indeed the barefooted woman in her
conception of morality, in her frankness and in her strong emotions
untainted by the gangrene of a rotting civilisation. To suggest to her
that fruitless love, that barren marriage, which destroys the soul of
France and is spreading through Australia, would be to speak a strange
language to her. He could say nothing. He was seized with a desire to get
away from her.

"Good-bye!" he said, holding out his hand. She took it in both her own.

"Ned!" she cried. "We part friends, don't we? If there is a man in the
world who could make me change my mind, it's you. Wherever you go I shall
be thinking of you and all life through I shall be the same. You have
only to let me know and there's nothing possible I wouldn't do for you
gladly. We are friends, are we not? Mates? Brother and sister?"

Brother and sister! The spirit moved in Ned's hot heart at the words.
Geisner's words came to him, nerving him.

"No!" he answered. "Friends? Yes. Mates? Yes. Brother and sister? No,
never. I don't feel able to talk now. You're like a thorn bush in front
of me that it's no use rushing at. But I'm not satisfied. You're wrong
somewhere and I'm right and the right thing is to love when Love comes
even if we're to die next minute. I'm going away and I may come back and
I mayn't but if I do you'll see my way. I shall think it out and show
you. Why, Nellie, I'm a different man already since you kissed me. You
and I together, why, we'd straighten things out if they were a thousand
times as crooked. What couldn't we do, you and me? And we'll do it yet,
Nellie. When I come back you'll have me and we two will give things such
a shaking that they'll never be the same again after we've got through
with them. Now, goodbye! I'll come back if it's years and years, and
you'll wait for me, I know. Good-bye, till then."

She felt her feet leave the ground as he lifted her to him in a hug that
made her ribs ache f