She threw the hood back from her abundant hair and stood a little apart,
her hands pressed upon her eyes, struggling with her tears, already
wondering at the sudden, overwhelming emotion that had swept her into
this betrayal. He mused in a troubled way, perplexed by her
contradictions avowal, feeling that, after all, he might have done this
girl a great wrong.

'Has your life been so unhappy, then?' he asked.

'It has been too happy,' she replied in a constrained voice.

'Too happy?'

'If I had learned to know sorrow sooner I could have borne it better,
perhaps; but until a year ago my life was all happiness. Before that I
had those who loved me, and neither fears nor cares. My father died, and
mother followed him within seven months. I was their only child; I found
myself alone, beset with anxieties and terrors, utterly desolate. I am
going to be Mrs. Macdougal's companion at her husband's sheep-run, deep
in the Australian Bush, and to teach their children. Since coming aboard
I have been too much alone; I have had too much time to think of my
hopelessness, my loneliness. There were moments when I seemed to be cut
off from the world. It was in one of these moments that I--I--' She made
a significant gesture. Her voice had grown faint, and her limbs trembled.

'Stay,' he said gently, 'I'll get you a seat.'

His concern about this stranger, his curiosity, occasioned no
self-questionings, no probing into motives. For the time being his
customary attitude of mind--that of the pessimist sceptically weighing