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He called to Millicent and Susan, and began to repack the hamper. Bret said suddenly:

“It looks like rain over there.”

Drew scowled at the bank of dark clouds lying like a distant smoke-screen along the western sky. “That means we'll have to put the hood up. Might as well do it now while Susan and Milly pack.”

Bret, grappling with his side of the hood and side-curtains, was thinking that his discovery hadn't helped him much. There was still a very practical situation to be faced, and two long lives to be lived in whatever degree of happiness could be achieved—

But his anger against Susan was gone. That was something. And he smiled at her as she came up with the hamper, glanced at the still virgin glory of the Madison's bonnet and said with pretended apprehension, “We're going to get splashed!” to which she replied in an awed whisper, “Not God Himself would
dare—”

After that, absurdly enough, he felt more cheerful. There began to creep over him one of those irresponsible moods which, because of his more usual soberness, swept him sometimes into incredible depths of foolery. It was at such times that he and Susan, clowning together, had always hit it off best. They had escaped into buffoonery as into the unreal sawdust world of a circus-ring, and there, forgetting everything, they'd capered and somersaulted and jumped through hoops in a kind of wild holiday abandon.

But Susan, somehow,
didn't seem to catch his mood this time. She sat in her corner of the back seat, and though she smiled and chaffed her father's careful manœuvres through the scrub, she seemed, really, rather sober and withdrawn.

Drew came out on to the main road and turned westward again with obvious relief. He called back to Bret:

“We put in a solid hour there. Never mind, plenty of time. How far to Mudgee?”

“About a hundred. Take you over three hours, not knowing the road. Three and a half if it rains.”

But Millicent protested:

“We've all day before us, Tom. And there's heaps of food still. We could have lunch by the road. It's only going to be a shower.”

Susan was thinking that a year ago when she'd walked blindly out into the street from the block of flats, with Bret silent and inimical at her side, the sky had looked just as it did now. He'd put her into a taxi, said shortly, “I'll come to-night,” and then she'd been alone with new refinements of suffering to face—

And nothing much to face them with. The half-hour she'd just been through with Bret had left her mind feeling as her body might have felt after being flung ashore from a heavy surf, aching, limp, helpless with exhaustion.

She'd
gone down the passage to the door of their flat thinking, curiously enough, of Bret. Not thinking anything in particular about him, but just holding a mental image of him up before her mind as one will try in the midst of illness or pain to remember happier things. So that when the door had opened swiftly from inside, and she'd seen not Jim, but Bret himself confronting her, her little involuntary cry of his name had been only a continuation, really, of her thoughts. She must have looked, she supposed, rather ghastly, because he said at once:

“You know?”

But she'd only stared at him. He seemed malevolent, implacable, and the pallor of his face was like something smeared unevenly over its surface. She'd said with sudden tearing anxiety:

“Are – are you ill? What's the matter?”

He shook his head, and she with a flare of resentment that this hard thing should be made, by his presence, so unbearably harder, demanded sharply:

“Where's Jim?”

He'd crossed the room, flung a window up, turned and hurled the words at her as if he'd hoped they'd kill her:

“He's dead.”

“Dead!”

Her repetition was the merest whisper, but it hovered and echoed about them interminably. Susan could remember putting her hands up vaguely, stupidly, as though there were something she could brush away—

Bret had turned back to the window; she wanted to speak to him but couldn't think of the words she needed. She could only wonder dully how she had come to be sitting on the end of the couch, and feel a rambling surprise that she had not fainted or screamed or fallen down—

But quite soon,
if she wasn't careful, she'd go to sleep—

Her head sagged sideways, her eyes closed; with her last remnant of consciousness she tried to open them and couldn't—

It must have been only minutes, for when she woke again with a shiver Bret was still standing at the window with his back to her. But it had felt like years, it had felt like a whole blessed eternity, cutting her off as cleanly as a knife from the horrors on the other side. Nature, she thought now, watching the bush by the side of the road, its riotous colour subdued by the coming storm into a soft opaque grey-green, was extraordinarily ingenious. She cared less than nothing how you suffered until your suffering brought you to a point where your biological usefulness, either mental or physical, was endangered. Then, sharply efficient, she took things in hand. Sleep swooped like a black curtain between you and the shocks under which your whole brain and body were reeling. Not rest exactly but respite. Something that hid you for a few moments even from yourself. Probably, Susan reflected, it was a form of anæsthetic to keep you quiet while she went on doing things to you. Steadying your heart and smoothing out your nerves and making mysterious adjustments to all your too-rudely disturbed mechanism—

Anyhow, when she did wake again she was curiously calm. The few moments when she might have panicked had been deftly stolen away from her. She stood up and went steadily enough to the door.

“I'm going home,” she said, but he turned so sharply
that she stopped with her hand half outstretched to the doorknob.

“No,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Sit down.”

She went back slowly to the couch. She wasn't thinking of him much now. Her whole mind, since waking from that brief black sleep, had been busy with the child. He came away from the window and stood facing her across the table. He said coldly:

“Are you all right? I've got to talk to you and it might as well be at once.”

She said:

“I'm all right,” and then wondering rather that it hadn't occurred to her to ask before, “How – what happened?”

“He was crossing the street – coming here.” There was an accusation in the last words, she winced, not at it, but at his tone. “He – a car skidded and knocked him down; he hit his head on the corner of the pavement. They took him to the hospital and sent for me. He – didn't live long.”

She twisted her hands together in her lap. Bret went on:

“He told me to come here – and tell you.”

She looked at him dumbly, and he flared out with sudden savage brutality:

“Are you satisfied now you've killed him?”

The room, his furious, accusing face, danced crazily before her eyes but her voice was calm enough:

“Please don't say that. Don't think it. For your own sake as well as mine. It isn't true.”

He said menacingly:

“He wanted to marry you. He wanted you in a way you didn't deserve to be wanted. All you could give him was – this—”

His little
gesture swept herself, the flat, and all her hours in it with Jim, into a common limbo of unpleasantness. She sat up a little straighter and her voice had a crisper edge:

“‘This,' whether you believe it or not, had its beauty – for both of us.”

He retorted angrily: “Precious little for Jim.”

She looked past him, seeing things he couldn't see. Jim on his knees by her chair, his vivid face alight with happiness, Jim with a towel round his waist helping her to wash up in their tiny kitchen. Jim reading aloud to her, Jim coming in with his arms full of parcels and flowers, Jim asleep—

She said slowly:

“You haven't any right to say that. You don't know. No one knows now – but myself. Anyhow,” she added thoughtfully, “it filled a time that might have been filled more harmfully elsewhere.”

“‘Elsewhere,'” Bret said bitterly, “he'd have gone without illusions.”

She looked straight at him.

“If he had illusions about me,” she said, “it wasn't my doing. I never promised him, or led him to hope for more than I could give.”

“You couldn't give much, could you?”

She flushed.

“Not to him.”

“Although he gave everything to you.”

She'd grown a little angry then, nervous, edgy with strain and grief.

“Haven't you any justice? Could I help it if he did? I gave him the best I had —”

She stopped abruptly, forcing back tears, a threatening wave of hysteria.

“This is
becoming an argument. There isn't any need for that. I'm going now—”

He said more quietly:

“No, not yet. I'm sorry I – as you say there's no point in arguing about it. There's something I have to say, though. He told me about the child.”

He'd waited for a moment but when she didn't speak he went on, “I didn't mean to be unfair. I can't help—” he'd stumbled a little there so she'd helped him out:

“Disliking me—?”

And he'd answered quite naturally, “Yes,” and then looked rather staggered as if he felt some other self than the one he knew had made that curious admission. She'd prompted him:

“He told you about the child. Well?”

He looked at her helplessly.

“I don't know. What are you going to do about it?”

She was suddenly fiercely resentful. She said sharply, scornfully:

“I'm going to bear it and then I'm going to look after it. What did you expect?”

He said grimly:

“You're game, anyhow,” and she answered with weary exasperation:

“It isn't a question of gameness. It's only common honesty to accept the results of your actions without kicking. If only – it doesn't seem fair that the baby should have to suffer too—”

It was then that he'd said rather contemptuously:

“You're young enough to feel surprised when things aren't fair.”

And after a long pause he'd sat down abruptly on the other end of the couch and gone on talking without looking at her.

“When I was
looking out the window just now I – it occurred to me that there's a way out of all this. Jim asked me to see you through and look after the child. Well – I – of course I said ‘Yes,' as one does to a sick – to a dying person You don't boggle over requests like that at such a time. You don't say, ‘How?' or ask questions. You just promise – and then afterwards when it's over—”

She'd interrupted passionately:

“I'm not asking you to help me! I—”

He said:

“Wait a minute. I'm not suggesting that I help you. I don't want to help you. I don't,” he continued with deliberate sincerity, “care a damn what happens to you. But I do want to help the child. Jim's child. And the only way I can see is that you should marry me—”

Well, Susan thought, moving restlessly as the first drops of rain spattered against the side curtains, when you'd got through a moment like that you could get through anything. That's what Bret had said to her. “I don't care a damn what happens to you,” and in the same breath he'd gone on to suggest marriage—

And the most dreadful thing had been the way she'd seen right through it all to the end – that there was no way out. She'd have to do it. And yet, with a blind instinct of panic she'd fought and fought with arguments that he broke like sticks and tossed away—

“No— No!”

“Why not?”

“I – you don't love me.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You didn't love Jim but you were going to marry him.”

“For the baby's sake.”

“This
would be for the baby's sake too.”

He'd added after a moment, dispassionately:

“As a matter of fact you have no right to refuse.”

She knew that was true, but she went on struggling.

“I have the right to spoil my own life, but I haven't the right to spoil yours.”

“We aren't considering your life or mine. We're considering the child – who interests me only as Jim's child.”

She'd cried despairingly.

“It – it wouldn't be – honest.”

He was puzzled by that.

“Why not?”

Then she'd collapsed. There simply hadn't been strength left in her for any more conflict. She said putting her hands to her face:

“All right.”

He nodded.

“I think it will be best. And as soon as possible. To-night?”

She said dully:

“You'll have to get Dad's consent.”

He looked, for a swift second, rather amused.

“You aren't as modern as I thought,” and she retorted irritably:

“Evidently I'm
more
modern than you thought. I'm not of age.”

After that he'd seemed gentler.

“Shall we go and see him at once, then?”

“I'd rather go alone. Will you come later?”

“Very well.”

They'd left the flat together, silently, and gone, still silent, down in the lift. Outside the sky was greenish, and the air heavy. In the taxi she'd heard a few heavy drops of rain begin to come down on the roof; hard, heavy like blows, faster and faster, like the agonising thunder of native drums—

Bret said sharply:

“Susan,
what's the matter?”

She came back to reality with a gasp and a pounding heart. She seemed to hear, still echoing, a faint sound that had been half sob and half cry. Bret was leaning towards her anxiously and she was clutching his hand. She released it and laughed nervously:

“Nothing – I must have been half asleep – I – the rain – it startled me, coming down on the hood so suddenly—”