Power kept his promise. The afternoon sun was still high in the sky when he let loose his horse in the stable yard at Surprise and walked across the stones to the house. He approached in view of the verandah where the household had come together after lunch. In the chair lay Selwyn lost to all the ill humours of the heat; but Mrs. Selwyn interrupted her reading to give him a searching glance, and Neville shot up shaggy and cried "Hello!" Maud came down the steps. She wore a big hat as protection from the sun; but she looked up to speak and showed Power the lines of care that twenty-four hours had upon her face.
"Come this way, Jim. It's up the , and there are too many inside."
They passed together a little way up the bed of the creek, clambering once and again over sharp faces of rock where fair pools of water rest after the rains. They reached a spot where a[Pg 238] sapling throws a broken shade upon a shelf of stone. They sat down. The is gentle here as are judged at Surprise. Below, stands the house round the bank of the rise—above, the creek climbs up into the hills.
"Well, Jim?"
"Yes."
"Come, don't look so cut up. It isn't fair to me. I've spent all day looking things in the face and you must help."
"I've come here as you asked. What is there to say?"
"Do you still feel the same about her?"
"Yes. It will always be the same."
"We have come to the end of things. Is that it?"
"It needn't be that. There is friendship left."
"Fall from first to second place? How dare you ask me that.... What makes you like this? She has nothing more than her looks. She has no education. She can have only a child's experience of life."
"It makes no difference."
"And where will you be when the has gone?"
"It will be time to see when that happens."
"But they say she isn't even a good girl. A girl must be so weak to let men do as they like with her."
"We have said enough."
"And what am I to do? Make the best of things I can? Take off my love like an old coat and throw it away because it ............