Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/403

 around her. For the past month now Australia had been giving her these horrors. It was as if the silvery freedom suddenly turned, and showed the scaly back of a reptile, and the horrible paws.

Out of all her bird-like elation at this new-found freedom, freedom for her, the female, suddenly, without warning, dark revulsions struck her. Struck her, it would seem, in her deepest female self, almost in her womb. These revulsions sent her into a frenzy. She had sudden, mad loathings of Australia. And these made her all the more frenzied because of her former great, radiant hopes and her silvery realisations. What, must it all be taken back from her, all this glisten of paradise, this glisten of paradise, this silvery freedom like protoplasm of life? Was it to be revoked?

There was Richard, that hell-bird, preaching, preaching at her: "Don't trust it. You can't have this absolved sort of freedom. It's an illusion. You can't have this freedom absolved from control. It can't be done. There is no stability. There will come a reaction and a devastation. Inevitable. You must have deep control from within.  You must have a deep, dark weight of authority in your own soul. You must be most carefully, sternly controlled from within. You must be under the hand of the Lord.  You can't escape the dark hand of the Lord, not even in free Australia. You'll get the devils turning on you if you try too much freedom. It can't be done. Too much freedom means you absolve yourself from the hand of the Lord, and once you're really absolved you fall a prey to devils, devils. You'll see. All you white females raging for further freedom. Wait, wait till you've got it and see how the devils will bite you with unclean, reptile sort of mouths. Wait, you who love Australia and its freedom. Only let me leave you to the freedom, till it bites you with a sort of sewer-mouth, like all these rats. Only let me abandon you to this freedom. Only let me —"

So he had preached at her, like a dog barking, barking senselessly. And oh, how it had annoyed her.

Yet gradually, quite apart from him, it had begun to happen to her. These hateful revulsions, when Australia had turned as it were unclean to her, with an unclean sort of malevolence. And her revulsions had possessed her.