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And she couldn't. No one could. Love happened to
you or it didn't, and it wasn't any use your telling yourself what a dear Jim was, how strong and young and jolly and good-looking, how thoroughly eligible in every way – you just simply went on not being in love with him.

Oh, and why should you be? A little flare of defiance made her move sharply in her seat. She stared angrily at the back of her father's head and told herself again that she didn't care
what
had happened, her theories were good theories, and if the world wouldn't allow them to work then the world was wrong and stupid—and unfair—

And she remembered Bret's angry, unfamiliar-looking face, its tan smeared over with a queer pallor, staring at her across a flower-laden table.

“It isn't fair,” she'd cried, “that the baby should have to suffer too.”

And he'd answered contemptuously:

“You're young enough to be surprised, I suppose, when things aren't fair.”

Well, a year had cured her of that, anyhow. She knew now that unfairness was in the day's work – everywhere, all the time people were unfair because they hadn't understood; like Bret the night he'd found Jim in the car—

Could you ever make anything decent of a life begun in such bitterness, such ugliness and hostility? Wouldn't you always have pictures at the back of your mind—

Swinging Japanese lanterns on the long verandah of Wondabyne; dancing; lovely air, cool and smooth with a smell of freshly-cut grass and the morning's brief spring shower; happiness brimming in you – happiness you couldn't account for now and didn't bother to
account for then; a feeling of being tremendously well, and tremendously vigorous, and glad that music sounded as it did, and the country smelt as it did, and that silk slid against your bare skin with just that elusive and delicious touch—

And then Bret at her side:

“Can you spare me a minute? I want to show you something.”

She'd said, “Yes—” and looked up at him doubtfully. She hadn't known him very well then, and she thought that in the barred light and shadow from the lantern overhead his face looked rather startling – distorted, almost as though it were mutilated with vast horizontal scars—

But she'd walked with him down the drive to the car. He opened its door. She was rather bewildered and peered at him through the darkness.

Jim had said once, grinning. “Bret's a fish. He'll never marry,” but at that moment she had wondered with the rather pathetic wordly half-knowledge of the pretty flapper whether he was quite such a fish after all. She said:

“What is it?”

And he answered harshly:

“Jim's in there – drunk.”

She said nothing. Stood for a rather whirling, blackening moment staring into the car. Then she leaned forward, groped into the darkness and the faint smell of whisky and cried miserably:

“Jim! Jim!”

Bret said shortly from behind her:

“Don't try to rouse him, please. I'm going to drive him home now. I just wanted you to see your handiwork.”

She flared round at him, shaking with anger.

“What do you mean?”

He said, shutting the door, speaking over his shoulder:

“Don't be so absurd. You're a pair of young fools. Do you think I'm going to watch Jim go to pieces, because a vain flapper wants his scalp to add to her collection?”

She said, calmly enough:

“I'm not responsible for this.

He shrugged and got into the car.

“You know best what you've done or said to him to-night to make him drink. It isn't one of his failings.”

The car was gone. She stood in the drive watching its red tail-light disappear, and then she began to cry painfully, silently, with her hands over her face, because some loveliness was gone out of the night, and she didn't quite know why it should have or whether it would ever come again—

From beside her, Bret said, conversationally:

“But of course they're extinct now.
Quite
extinct.”

She looked round at him sharply, but his face was as wooden as ever. And suddenly irritated, determined that, for once, he should be forced to explain himself, she demanded:

“What do you mean by that?”

He looked at her too now and for a few horrible seconds the thing she was always trying to avoid happened. They stared straight into each other's eyes and she could see in his, all over again, the jarring clamour of a year-old war. She supposed, dully, that he could see things in hers too, and that in a moment or two they would be both struggling alone like swimmers flung violently apart by a tremendous wave. She'd found that out quite a long time ago. So long as
they didn't look at each other things weren't so bad. They could laugh and joke and make amicable conversation. They could even, when people were about, fling in a “dear” or a “darling” that sounded quite convincing. They could create an illusion of intimacy which was at least good enough to make it possible for them decently to pretend that they believed in it themselves—

But the things they saw when they looked at each other were – were—

But not a smile. Not a smile like that – mechanical smiles, sometimes; pitying, mocking, cruel, or really amused. But not smiles like this one that Bret was suddenly giving her – not—

“You seemed to be bothering about it,” he said. “I just wanted to remind you they really are extinct.”

And then he leaned forward and called to her father:

“This is Parramatta we're in. The turn off comes pretty soon – to your left.”

Millicent looked over her shoulder to speak to Susan and looked quickly back again. She mused pleasantly for a few moments on the quaintness of her own Anglo-Saxon temperament. Perhaps it would be more satisfying, at all events from the material point of view, if one were a Latin? Perhaps it would be nice when one saw in the faces of one's children intense joy, intense sorrow, to be able to plunge into it with them, to lift one's voice in lamentation or to cry the praises of the blessed Virgin? But no, she thought regretfully, glancing down at her fragile body, one must have the
figure for that kind of thing as well as the temperament. One might conceivably lash oneself into the required emotional frenzy, but one could not acquire the bosoms! So one glanced round and saw one's daughter looking as though heaven and all its angels had appeared before her; and one glanced away again quickly so that no one should be embarrassed by the acknowledgment of too deep an emotion—

But there it was. Oh, lovely day! Susan looking happy, and here before them, mile after precious mile, the Western Road!

D
REW
settled down to his driving with a freshened interest. This, you might say, was the beginning of the country; here you began to see bits of vacant land, and there were grassy banks by the roadside, and the scattered shops had that gauche but rather engaging appearance unknown to city shops, of not being quite sure what it was they were really there to sell. Drew began to feel benevolent; he began to feel expansive and kindly and tolerant, and he liked the mental picture which he had of his large, gleaming, powerful car rocketing along through this naive and humble countryside.

It was pleasant, he thought, to feel the velvety throb of the engine, the effortless power of it soaring them up the crest of this hill ahead. Pleasant, too, not to know what was coming. Pleasant – and of them all, he thought, rather grimly, he was the only one who could be knowing that particular pleasure – to come to it without memories, quite fresh to a fresh adventure.

They swooped at the sunny crest of the hill, sank away from it into lavender coloured shadow, and the road raced on ahead of them to another hilltop. Yes, this was fine! Good road, straight, just enough ups and downs to keep it from being monotonous, and a car that purred like a cat newly fed on fish and cream! You could let her out a bit on a road like this – turn the purr into a roar, the cat into a tiger!

Up into the sun again, down into the shadow and still the road lay in front vanishing like a thread over yet another distant hill! Forty-five and you hardly knew you were moving! Fifty. Fifty-five. A miracle really, this conversion of a few gallons of petrol into annihilated miles! A liquid, a vapour that could spin you like the carpet of Bagdad from Ballool to Coolami!

A longer hill, this one – but she rose to it like a bird! Funny, the effect of movement the glittering sun gave to that little silver figure in front; if it weren't so damned fanciful, so definitely one of the miracles that
don't
happen, you'd say that all the power of this headlong flight came from its wild, forward-leaping body and followed its forward-pointing hand—

And here was the top coming at them, behind them – and still the road straight as ever, and still another green softly rising hill ahead!

That was pretty, he thought, glancing out of the corner of his eye at a tiny cottage, a vast flame-tree, a green garden with children in it. And a peach tree in blossom. Funny that he'd never thought of putting in peach trees at Ballool? Milly might like it better if—

But of course, naturally, she did like it. Rotten damp little place that one near the cemetery. No conveniences. She had those now. Hot-water service, all the electric gadgets you could buy – more comforts than she'd ever had even at her wonderful Wondabyne! And here was another of those damn hills!

He said crossly:

“How long does
this
go on?”

Millicent said, peering at him round the edge of her veil:

“Well, dear, it's like that rhyme of Hilaire Belloc's:

“The road went up,

The road went down,

And there the matter ended it.”

But presently she added comfortingly: “Not
all
the way. Wait till we get on to the mountains.”

He snapped:

“I know the mountains as well as you do. Been there by train dozens of times.”

She said: “Of course,
darling, I'd forgotten,” and patted his knee.

So she thought about it now, and wondered how it could happen that a man like Tom should be so – so
circular
? He was rather like one of those dear, busy toy trains you have when you're little, she reflected, the ones that run round and round and round and bluff themselves that they're getting somewhere. And it was odd that Tom should be like that, because he wasn't really unimaginative. Every now and then he did something, said something which made you feel that he'd got on to the circular track by mistake – that if some one or something could juggle with the what-do-you-call-thems? – joints? – points, yes, that was it – and straighten the line out he'd be off with a rattle and a roar, whistling and puffing and spouting steam—

Well, you'd think the war might have done that, but it hadn't. He'd gone and he'd come back, and immediately, except for Colin, it was as if the war had never been. But that, probably, was because he'd had to leave things unfinished when he went, and he did so hate unfinished things. Yes, she knew well enough
though he hadn't actually told her, that until he'd provided her with every comfort and convenience that money could buy he wouldn't even look up from his unsparing self-imposed slavery.

Oh, the poor darling! Impossible to tell him how little she cared for anything beyond a quite modest and reasonable comfort. Worse than impossible – harmful, dangerous. Because that was the test he'd set himself right from the day of their lovely, ridiculous elopement – to outdo her old life in happiness, her old home in comfort, her old possessions in opulence! A test he wouldn't ever let himself forget, not even, as it should have been forgotten, in those fairy-tale days when they'd lived like a pair of babes in a wood of unbelievable peach blossoms!

And the result had been, ironically and pathetically enough, that no home she had ever shared with him had seemed to her as truly home as Wondabyne. That, of course, she hoped he didn't know. It was one of the freakish practical jokes Life played sometimes, jokes not in the best of taste, which one tried to ignore. But it had been, always, a kind of restless pilgrimage with, God help us, Ballool for its Mecca! “This will do for the present, Milly. We'll get something better later.” So they had got something better. And still better. And now, at fifty-seven, they were in the best at last, and the best was—

Oh, rubbish, rubbish! The best was beautiful! Not because, as Tom seemed to think, it had three bathrooms and a hundred guinea billiard-table, but because Tom was triumphantly still Tom, and because fifty-seven or not she'd elope with him again tomorrow—

And this trip, really, was significant. What did it mean, beyond that he wanted to have a good long play
with his new toy, the Madison? She glanced at him rather ruefully, wondering if it could possibly mean that he'd forgiven the country at last for having been her home before he knew her? For having taken both his children? For having been, in the back of his mind for nearly thirty-seven years, a vague, intangible enemy and rival which he must vanquish or die?

And then she realised that she'd been staring without seeing it at the effigy on the radiator-cap, and she found herself thinking with an irrational confidence:

“But of course he'll love it when he gets there—”

Bret, perturbed, fished in his overcoat pocket for cigarettes. Then he thought:

“Oh, hell, I couldn't light it if I had it.” And sat gloomily, his hands still in his pockets, staring at the countryside. Amazing, he reflected, the things that could happen between two people without any words at all!

Susan—

You glanced at her and she looked so wretched that you were sorry. So, as was right and natural, you said something, stupid enough, Lord knew, but meant to be comforting, and she looked at you and you looked at her and suddenly things began to happen. A kind of warmth, an expanding, a surprised, relieved, but elusive feeling that everything was really very simple after all—and on her face a dreadful and disturbing joy—