There was another pause.

"If you won't for the sake of your wife and your children and yourself and everybody, will you do it to please me?" asked Nellie, who knew that Mr. Hobbs regarded her as the one perfect woman in Australia and, woman-like, was prepared to take advantage thereof.

"You know, Miss Lawton, I'm not one of the fellows who swear off Monday mornings and get on the spree the next Sat.u.r.day night. If I say I'll turn temperance I'll turn." So quoth the st.u.r.dy Hobbs.

"I know that. If you were the other sort do you think I'd be bothering you?" retorted Nellie.

"Well, I'll do it," said Mr. Hobbs. "So help me----"

"Never mind that," interrupted the girl. "If a man's a man his word's his word, and if he's not all the swearing in the world won't make any difference. Let's shake on it!" She held out her hand.

Mr. Hobbs dropped the door-k.n.o.b and covered her long, slender hand with his great, broad, h.o.r.n.y-palmed one.

"Good night, Mr. Hobbs!" she said, the "shake" being over. "Get her to sleep and don't let her fret!"

"Good night, Miss Nellie!" he answered, using her name for the first time. He wanted to say something more but his voice got choked up and he shut the door in her face, so confused was he.

"h.e.l.lo, Nellie!" said a voice that made her heart stand still, as she crossed the road, walking sadly homewards. At the same time two hands stretched out of the dense shadow into the lane of moonlight that shone down an alley way she was pa.s.sing and that cut a dazzling swath in the blackness made still blacker by the surrounding brilliancy. "I've been wondering if you ever would finish that pitch of yours."

It was Ned.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE ROAD TO QUEENSLAND.

While Nellie had been talking temperance to Mr. Hobbs, Ned had been watching her impatiently from the other side of the street. For an hour and more he had been prowling up and down, up and down, between the Phillipses and the Hobbses, having learned from Mrs. Phillips, who looked wearier than ever, where the Hobbses lived now and why Nellie had gone there after hardly stopping to swallow her dinner. At seven he had acquired this information and returned soon after nine to find Nellie still at the house of sickness, now, alas, the house of death. So he had paced up and down, up and down, waiting for her. He had seen the Hobbs'

door open at last and had watched impatiently, from the shadow opposite, the conversation on the door step. His heart gave a great leap as she stopped across the road full in the moonlight. He saw again the sad stern face that had lived as an ideal in his memory for two long eventful years. There was none like her in the whole world to him, not one.

The years had come to her in this stifling city, amid her struggling and wrestling of spirit, but the strong soul in her had borne her up through all, she had aged without wearying, grown older and sadder without withering from her intense womanhood. Broader of hip a little, as Ned could see with the keen eyes of love, not quite so slender in the waist, fuller in the uncorsetted bust, more sloping of shoulder as though the pillared neck had fleshed somewhat at the base; the face, too, had gathered form and force, in the freer curve of her will-full jaw, in the sterner compression of fuller lips that told their tale of latent pa.s.sions strangely bordering on the cruel, in the sweeter blending of Celt and Saxon shown in straight nose, strong cheek-bones and well-marked brows. She trod still with the swinging spring of the bill-people, erect and careless. Only the white gleam of her collar and a dash of colour in her hat broke the sombre hue that clothed her, as before, from head to foot.

Ned devoured her with his eyes as she came rapidly towards him, unconscious of his presence. She was full grown at last, in woman's virgin prime, her mind, her soul, her body, all full and strong with pure thoughts, natural instincts and human pa.s.sions. Her very sadness gave her depths of feeling that never come to those who t.i.tter and fritter youth away. Her very ignoring of the love-instincts in her, absorbed as her thoughts were in other things, only gave those instincts the untrammelled freedom that alone gives vigorous growth. She was barbarian, as her thoughts had been beside the dying baby: the barbarian cultured, as Shakespeare was, the barbarian wronged, as was Spartacus, the barbarian hating and loving and yearning and throbbing, the creature of her instincts, a rebel against restrictions, her mind subject only to her own strong will. She was a woman of women, in Ned's eyes at least. One kiss from her would be more than all other women could give, be their self-abandonment what it might. To be her lover, her husband, a man might yield up his life with a laugh, might surrender all other happiness and be happy ever after. There was none like her in the whole world to Ned, not one--and he came to say good-bye to her, perhaps for ever.

In the black shadows thrown by the high-rising moon, the crossing alley-way cut a slice of brilliancy as if with a knife. From the shadow into the moonshine two hands stretched towards her as Ned's voice greeted her. She saw his tall form looming before her.

"Ned!" she cried, in answer, grasping both his hands and drawing him forward into the light. "I was expecting you. I've been thinking of you every minute for the last week. How tired you look! You're not ill?"

"No! I'm all right," he answered, laughing. "It's those confounded trains. I can't sleep on them, and they always give me a headache. But you're looking well, Nellie. I can't make out how you do it in this stuffed-up town."

"I'm all right," She replied, noticing a red rose in his coat but saying nothing of it. "Nothing seems to touch me. Did you come straight through?"

"Straight through. We rushed things all we could but I couldn't get away before. Besides, as long as I get Sat.u.r.day's boat in Brisbane it'll be as soon as it's possible to get on. That gives me time to stay over to-night here. I didn't see you going down and I began to wonder if I'd see you going back. You can do a pitch, Nellie. When a fellow's waiting for you, too."

Nellie laughed, then sobered down. "The baby's dead," she said, sadly.

"You recollect it was born when you were here before, the day we went to the Strattons."

"I don't wonder," he answered, looking round at the closed-in street, with its dull, hopeless, dreary rows of narrow houses and hard roadway between. "But I suppose you're tired, Nellie. Let's go and get some oysters!"

"I don't care to, thanks. I feel like a good long walk," she went on, taking his arm and turning him round to walk on with her. "I'm thirsting for a breath of fresh air and to stretch myself. I'm a terrible one for walks, you know."

"Not much riding here, Nellie;" walking on.

"That's why I walk so. I can go from here right down to Lady Macquarie's Chair in under half-an-hour. Over two miles! Not bad, eh, Ned?"

"That's a good enough record. Suppose we go down there now, Nellie, only none of your racing time for me. It's not too late for you?"

"Too late for me! My word! I'm still at the Phillipses and they don't bother. I wouldn't stay anywhere where I couldn't come and go as I liked.

I'd like to go it you're not too tired."

"It'll do me good," said Ned, gleefully. So they set off, arm in arm.

After they had walked a dozen yards he stopped suddenly.

"I've brought you a rose, Nellie," he exclaimed, handing it to her. "I'm so pleased to see you I forgot it."

"I knew it was for me," she said, fondly, pinning it at her throat. "How ever did you recollect my colour?"

"Do you think I forget anything about you, Nellie?" he asked. She did not answer and they walked on silently.

"Where is Geisner?" he enquired, after a pause. "I don't know. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Only he'd advise us a little."

After a pause: "What do you think of things, Ned?"

"What do I think? We couldn't get any wires through that explained anything. There was nothing on but the ordinary strike business when I came down. I suppose some of the chaps have been talking wild and the Government has snapped at the chance to down the union. You know what our fellows are."

"Yes. But I don't quite see what the Government's got to gain.

Proclamations and military only make men worse, I think."

"Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't," answered Ned. "A crowd that's doing no harm, only kicking up a bit of a row, will scatter like lambs sometimes if a single policeman collars one of them. Another time the same crowd will jump on a dozen policemen. The Government thinks the crowd'll scatter and I'm afraid the crowd'll jump."

"Why afraid?" enquired Nellie, biting her lips.

"Because it has no chance," answered Ned. "These are all newspaper lies about them having arms and such nonsense. There aren't 500 guns in the whole Western country and half of them are old muzzle-loading shot guns.

The kangarooers have got good rifles but nineteen men out of twenty no more carry one than they carry a house."

"But the papers say they're getting them!"

"Where are they to get them from, supposing they want them and naturally the chaps want them when they hear of military coming to 'shoot 'em down'? You can reckon that the Government isn't letting any be carried on the railways and, even if they did I don't believe you could buy 500 rifles in all Queensland at any one time."

"Then it's all make-up that's in the papers? It certainly seemed to me that there was something in it."

"That's just it, there is something in it. Just enough, I'm convinced, to give the Government an excuse for doing what they did during the maritime strike without any excuse and what the squatters have been planning for them to do all along."

"One of the Queensland men who was here a week or two ago was telling me about the maritime strike business. It was the first I'd heard of that.

Griffith didn't seem to be that way years ago," said Nellie.