"
"Yes. I guess he didn't mean me to kill myself with any desire at all!
Fancy being tyrannized over by a bit of paper and tobacco! Can't you get
a picture of it? A nice, big man like you and a cigarette standing there
with a grin on its face, like a savage god, making you bow down and
worship it! Horrible! Didn't the Lord know all about you when he made
that commandment about graven images!"
"Oh, you're inhuman--and you're a prig! You're a block of marble. You
think because you've never wanted anything in your life no one else
has."
"I like marble," she said with a laugh. "Something solid and substantial
about it. You can always be sure about it."
She went back to her book, but she was not reading. Presently she saw
him raking about among a sheaf of waratahs with which she had hidden the
ugly old grate. He looked up exultantly.
"Six cigarette ends! That's enough to make three if I roll them thin.
Lord be thanked I've some cigarette papers."
There was something so pathetic about this that she forgot to feel
contemptuous about it. Before another hour had gone he had smoked the
three resurrected cigarettes as well as the last remaining new one. She
made more tea. It was five o'clock, the hour when all the sun's heat in
Australia seems to gather itself together and pour downwards, drawing up
the earth heat to meet it.
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