In a moment the last
six weeks of mad, unhappy dreaming and hoping vanished; she saw herself
back again in her own sphere among her own people. She tried to picture
Louis there, too, and realized horribly that he would never fit into the
picture. Against Wullie and the doctor and her aunt he would look so
vulgar, so pretentious, so tinsel-coloured. And how they would laugh at
a man who could not master himself, a man who cried!
"Why, I'm a snob! I was hurt when he thought I'd disgrace him by my bad
manners. And now I'm being just as cruel!"
Then she jerked herself away from Lashnagar and stood with the last
letter in her hand, afraid to open it. It was postmarked Melbourne and
had come in that morning. It was in Louis's writing, and gave her an
acute sense of distress. She stood still by a shop window, looking into
it blindly until she realized that she was looking at a crocodile and
some snakes squirming about in tanks in a naturalist's window. The
straggly writing reminded her of the ugly snakes: it told her that he
was drunk more or less when the letter was written; she looked from the
letter to the snakes. One of them crawled writhingly over the others,
lifted its head and put out its tongue at her: shivering, she opened the
letter.
"MY OWN DARLING,
"Wasn't it a sell? That damned captain's had a down on me all the trip.
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