King's lodgers went from Domain to hotel, from
hotel to the police, and from the police to the Salvation Army, they
could not trace Jimmy. She never saw him again; he lived in her mind, a
constant torment, the epitome of victimization, gallantly loyal and
valiant even in homelessness and starvation.
CHAPTER XVIII
While Louis was so weak and ill Marcella came to several conclusions.
The first was that they must leave Sydney at once; the second was that
Louis must be made to work if he would not be persuaded to work
willingly. In work, it seemed to her now, lay his salvation much more
than in imprisonment, even though she should have him imprisoned in a
nursing home, under treatment. And in getting away from Sydney lay her
own salvation. It was high summer; the heat to her, after the cool
exhilaration of the Highlands, was terrific; very often the thermometer
she borrowed from Dutch Frank's bedroom registered a hundred and twenty
degrees in their room, and the close intimacy of life in one room was
becoming appalling to her. While he was in bed she was happy in a purely
negative way; very soon happiness came to mean to her the state of
quiescence when he was not drunk. They had cleared up many things, and
though she was glad to have got to the bedrock of truth about him at
last she was sick with disillusionment, and a self-disgust at having
been so credulous, so easily deceived.
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