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388 world before us. Australia, with a sheep-run of our own? Or South Africa, with little nigger-boys to dig us diamonds? Or I know a place down at the bottom of Malay" He was laughing still; stooping his ruddy, wind-whipped fact to hers. "Anywhere, sweetheart. Anywhere at all. We've got the whole world to choose from, and there's always room for another rover on the Out Trail."

By the force of him he was sweeping her out into the atmosphere where his wild soul lived and drew deep breaths. But the air there was too strong for Jennifer. She felt suffocated; giddy; afraid. She pressed his face back with both hands, and he kissed the palms where they lay across his lips.

"Oh, don't," she gasped. "You frighten me."

"Poor little white bird. My darling, you're shaking all over. It was that cursed foolishness of mine at the window. See, then, is this going to bring the colour back?"

He kissed her eyelids and her forehead and her white cheeks; tenderly, remorsefully, and, like a weary baby, she let him do it. The storm of his passion seemed to have torn her strength up by the roots. She had nothing left to fight him with. She was scarcely conscious that there was need for fight. But dimly she felt that something wonderful and precious had come to her and that it could not stay.

"If one could only die," she whispered. "When one was perfectly happy, if one could only die."

His face changed and darkened. He, too, had forgotten the realities until her words brought them round him with thronging feet.

"Better to live and keep on being perfectly happy, you little silly thing," he said.

"But that can't be," she said, like one repeating a lesson. "That can't be."

Then he felt her move as though to push him away, and he held her more closely, foreseeing the battle that was coming. His strongly-masculine mind saw no use in it. There could be but the one end now. But he knew that the woman would have to go round about to it, and he waited, with his mouth a little set and a queer smile in his eyes.