Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/399

 "Yes."

"Rather suddenly at the end."

"Perhaps. But it's as well I should go soon if I'm going."

"You think so? Taken against the place, have you?"

"No—the contrary. If I stay much longer I shall stay altogether."

"Come quite to like it!" Jaz smiled slowly.

"Yes. I love it, Jaz. I don't love people. But this place—it goes into my marrow, and makes me feel drunk. I love Australia."

"That's why you leave it, eh?"

"Yes. I'm frightened. What I want to do is to go a bit further back into the bush—near some little township—have a horse and a cow of my own—and—damn everything."

""I can quite understand the 'damn everything' part of it," laughed Jaz. "You won't do it, though."

"I never was so tempted in my life. Talk about Eve tempting man to a fall: Australia tempts me. "Retro me—"

Jaz was silent for a few moments.

"You'd repent it, though," he said quietly.

"I'll probably repent whatever I do," replied Somers, "so what's the odds. I'll probably repent bitterly going to America, going back to the world: when I want Australia. I want Australia as a man wants a woman. I fairly tremble with wanting it."

"Australia?"

"Yes."

Jaz looked at Somers with his curious, light-grey eyes.

"Then why not stop?" he said seductively.

"Not now. Not now. Some cussedness inside me. I don't want to give in, you see. Not yet. I don't want to give in to the place. It's too strong. It would lure me quite away from myself. It would be too easy. It's too tempting. It's too big a stride, Jaz."

Jaz laughed, looking back at Richard's intense eyes.

"What a man you are, Mr Somers!" he said. "Come and live in Sydney and you won't find it such a big jump from anywhere else."

"No, I wouldn't want to live in Sydney. I'd want to