And all the time she was fighting the insidious temptation
to kill the unconscious aristocracy of her that had, after the first few
weeks in Sydney, set a barrier between her and Louis--a barrier of which
he was never once conscious. Other people, on a lower range of life,
seemed quite happy with a few thunder flashes of passion in a grey sky.
Louis did. Except when the end of the month brought pay day, and set him
itching to be off to the township, he seemed happy. At these times she
deliberately made love to him to hold him from the whisky, loathing the
deliberateness and expediency of a thing which, it seemed to her, ought
to be a spontaneous swelling of a wave until it burst overwhelmingly.
She did not realize until long afterwards what good discipline this was,
as her brain and spirit refused to follow her body along a meaner path.
Louis never guessed how she thought out calmly whether to be hurt or not
by him, and decided that it was better to be a wounded thing hiding her
wounds under a coat of mail, rather than a dead thing in
mummy-wrappings, in cotton-wool.
But the doctor's letter generated hope. She respected the doctor's
opinion. For him to be enthusiastic about anyone was very wonderful;
there was something wistful and very beautiful in this deferring of an
old man to one much younger, something very touching in his frank pride
in the big man's friendliness.
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