Ah, if only he were sure of her and her forgiveness; if only he were sure!

"You talk as though you had committed some crime yourself," said Moya; "well, I don't care if you have, so long as you tell me all about it.

There is nothing I wouldn't forgive--nothing upon earth--except such secrets from the girl you profess to love."

She had got rid of his arm some time before this, but their hands were still joined in the deepening twilight, until at this he dropped hers suddenly.

"Profess!" he echoed. "Profess, do I? You know better than that, at all events! Upon my soul I've a good mind to tell you after that, and chance the consequences!"

His anger charmed her, as the anger of the right man should charm the right woman. And this time it was she who sought his hand.

"Then tell me now," she whispered. "And you shall see how you have misjudged me."

It was hard on Moya that he was not listening, for she had used no such tone towards him these four-and-twenty hours. And listening he was, but to another sound which reached her also in the pause. It was the thud and jingle of approaching hors.e.m.e.n. Another minute and the white trappings of the mounted police showed through the dusk.

"That you, Mr. Rigden?" said a queer voice for the sergeant. "Can you give us a word, please?"

Rigden had but time to glance at Moya.

"I'll ride on slowly," she said at once; and she rode on the better part of a mile, leaving the way entirely to her good bush steed. At last there was quite a thunder of overtaking hoofs, and Rigden reined up beside her, with the sergeant not far behind. Moya looked round, and the sergeant was without his men, at tactful range.

"Do they guess anything?" whispered Moya.

"Not they!"

"Sure the others haven't gone on to scour Big Bushy?"

"No, only to cross it on their way back. They've given it up, Moya! The sergeant's just coming back for dinner."

His tone had been more triumphant before his triumph was certain, but Moya did not notice this.

"I'm so glad," she whispered, half mischievously, and caught his hand under cloud of early night.

"Are you?" said Rigden, wistfully. "Then I suppose you'll say you're glad about something else. You won't be when the time comes! But now it's all over you shall have your way, Moya; come for a stroll after dinner, and I'll tell you--every--single--thing!"

X

THE TRUTH BY INCHES

He told her with his back against the gate leading into Butcher-boy.

Moya heard him and stood still. Behind her rose the station pines, and through the pines peeped hut and house, in shadow below, but with each particular roof like a clean tablecloth in the glare of the risen moon.

A high light or so showed in the verandah underneath; this was Bethune's shirt-front, that the sergeant's breeches, and those transitory red-hot pin-heads their cigars. Rigden had superb sight. He could see all this at something like a furlong's range. Yet all that he did see was Moya with the moon upon her, a feathery and white silhouette, edged with a greater whiteness, and crowned as with gold.

"Your father!"

"Yes, I am his son and heir."

Her tone was low with grief and horror, but his was unintentionally sardonic. It jarred upon the woman, and reacted against the man. Moya's first feeling had been undefiled by self; but in an instant her tears were poisoned at their fount.

"And you told me your father was dead!"

The new note was one of the eternal scale between man and woman. It was the note of unbridled reproach.

"Never in so many words, I think," said Rigden, unfortunately.

"In so many words!" echoed Moya, but the sneer was her last. "I hate such contemptible distinctions!" she cried out honestly. "Better have cheated me wholesale, as you did the police; there was something thorough about that."

"And I hope that you can now see some excuse for it," rejoined Rigden with more point.

"For that, yes!" cried Moya at once. "Oh, dear, yes, no one can blame you for screening your poor father. I forgive you for cheating the police--it would have been unnatural not to--but I never, never shall forgive you for what _was_ unnatural--cheating _me_."

Rigden took a sharper tone.

"You are too fond of that word," said he, "and I object to it as between me and you."

"You have earned it, though!"

"I deny it. I simply held my tongue about a tragedy in my own family which you could gain nothing by knowing. There was no cheating in that."

"I disagree with you!" said Moya very hotly, but he went on as though she had not spoken.

"You speak as though I had hushed up something in my own life. Can't you see the difference? He was convicted under another name; it was a thing n.o.body knew but ourselves; n.o.body need ever have known. Or so I thought," he ended in a wretched voice.

But Moya was outwardly unmoved.

"All the more reason why you should have told me, and trusted me," she insisted.

"G.o.d knows I thought of it! But I knew the difference it would make. And I was right!"

It was his turn to be bitter, and Moya's to regain complete control.

"So you think it's that that makes the difference now?"

"Of course it is."

"Would you believe me if I a.s.sured you it was not?"

"No; you might think so; but I know."

"You know singularly little about women," said Moya after a pause.

And her tone shook him. But he said that he could only judge by the way she had taken it now.

There was another pause, in which the proud girl wrestled with her pride. But at last she told him he was very dull. And she drew a little nearer, with the ghost of other looks behind her tears.

But the high moon just missed her face.