he rely at such a pass on the sense of the One above all
others. What she said to herself as she moved tirelessly about the sick
room, damping cloths, filling the ice-bag, infiltering drops of
nourishment, was: "God is good!" and these words, far from breathing a
pious resignation, voiced a confidence so bold that it bordered on
irreverence. Their real meaning was: Richard has still ever so much
work to do in the world, curing sick people and saving their lives. God
must know this, and cannot now mean to be so foolish as to WASTE him,
by letting him die.

And her reliance on the Almighty's far-sighted wisdom was justified.
Richard weathered the crisis, slowly revived to life and health; and
the day came when, laying a thin white hand on hers, he could whisper:
"My poor little wife, what a fright I must have given you!" And added:
"I think an illness of some kind was due--overdue--with me."

When he was well enough to bear the journey they left home for a
watering-place on the Bay. There, on an open beach facing the Heads,
Mahony lay with his hat pulled forward to shade his eyes, and with
nothing to do but to scoop up handfuls of the fine coral sand and let
it flow again, like liquid silk, through his fingers. From beneath the
brim he watched the water churn and froth on the brown reefs; followed
the sailing-ships which, beginning as mere dots on the horizon, swelled
to stately white waterbirds, and shrivelled again to dots; drank in,
with greedy nostrils, the mixed spice of warm sea, hot seaweed and
aromatic tea-scrub.

And his strength came back as rapidly as usual. He soon felt well
enough, leaning on Mary's arm, to stroll up and down the sandy roads of
the township; to open book and newspaper; and finally to descend the
cliffs for a dip in the transparent, turquoise sea. At the end of a
month he was at home again, sunburnt and hearty, eager to pick up the
threads he had let fall. And soon Mary was able to make the comfortable
reflection that everything was going on just as before.

In this, however, she was wrong; never, in their united lives, would
things be quite the same again. Outwardly, the changes might pass
unnoticed--though even here, it was true, a certain name had now to be
avoided, with which they had formerly made free. But this was not
exactly hard to do, Purdy having promptly disappeared: they heard at
second-hand that he had at last accepted promotion and gone to
Melbourne. And since Mary had suffe