ar--little
meannesses, and selfishnesses. He locks things up--even here, where no
one ever comes. That's a horrible spirit of selfishness, isn't it?"

She told him calmly, uncomplainingly, impersonally as one talks to a
doctor, of his locking up his cigarettes, his tobacco, his writing
paper; of how he carried the only pencil about in his pocket and hid
away the papers from his mother, the books from Dr. Angus until he had
read them. One day last week they had been short of milk, and Marcella
had been anxious about the boy's food. The breakfast was on the table;
she had to run to her bedroom for a bib for Andrew. When she got back
Louis had already poured all the milk into his tea, saying that he had
done it by accident. Another time she had thrown away the boy's tablet
of soap by accident, and could not find it anywhere. Louis had his own
tablet, locked away; there was no other nearer than Klondyke except the
home-made stuff composed of mutton fat and lye, very cruel to tender
skin. And he had made a scene when she asked him for his soap for Andrew
and, when she, too, made a scene threw it away into the scrub where she
could not find it. Little things--little straws that showed the way of
the hurricane.

"You see," she said calmly. "It wouldn't do for me to die, and leave
Andrew to that sort of love, would it? I knew a little boy once who had
to look after his father," and she told him of Jimmy Peters on the ship.
"I think if it came to dying, the only thing would be to take Andrew
along too."

"Don't you think you're being rather conceited?" he said suddenly. "Has
it occurred to you that you're taking too much on yourself? You admit
that you're keeping your husband a parasite. Are you going to do the
same to your child? Are you the ultimate kindliness of the world? You
tell me of your own stern childhood. Has it hurt you? You must be
logical, you know!" he added, smiling at her.

"I think I want Andrew to be happy rather than heroic. Heroism is such a
cold fierce thing. I'm only just realizing what a coward I've been, and
how utterly unheroic my hope in Louis has been. But it's so natural,
isn't it? I didn't dare face the rest of life without the belief that
some day we should be happy. Every time he gets drunk I've told myself,
very decidedly, that this was the last time. And I know I've been lying
to myself because I daren't face the truth."

Kraill smoked thoughtfully for a few minutes.

"I suppose it never