seemed to her. The desire for whisky
that had obsessed him for ten years seemed to have died: he frankly
admitted that it gave him no trouble now at all. When she seemed
inclined to praise him for his bravery he laughed at her; there was no
bravery in doing a thing that was perfectly easy and natural to him. He
looked different: he was just as different as Saul of Tarsus after he
saw the blinding light on the Damascus road. His nerves never cracked
now; the little meannesses of which both she and the boy had been
victims had disappeared; he gave her a kind of wistful, protecting love
that proved to her, more even than his frequent safe visits to the
township, that something radical had happened that day in the
Bush--something so radical that, if it were taken from him, he would not
be there at all. She felt that he was safe now; she felt that the boy
was safe; she felt that in everyone on earth who was sick and sad and
unhappy was the capacity for safety. But she did not know how they might
come by it.

But she knew, incontrovertibly, that she could never love Louis again
with any degree of happiness or self-satisfaction. That much Kraill had
shown her. She and Louis had no part in each other's spiritual nights
and days; the typhoon of physical passion that had swept her up for a
few minutes she saw now as a very cheap substitute for the apotheosis
Kraill had indicated. It was Louis's weakness that had been their
strongest bond in the past: now that that was gone there was little left
in him for her. But peace after pain was very beautiful.

It was not until after six months of sanity that he told her all about
the miracle. One evening, after the child had gone to bed, they were
sitting on the verandah. Louis had been talking of going home to start
afresh in England.

"The voyage would do you good, Marcella. My diagnostic eye has been on
you lately," he said as he lighted a cigarette and passed it to her.
"You're looking fagged, and it's unnatural to see you looking fagged.
You're getting thin. I don't want to see you suddenly evaporate, old
girl."

She shook her head and stared unseeingly over the soft green of
springing life that, before they came, had been devastating gorse.

"Yes, clearly a trip to England is indicated," he said. "You're alone
too much. Marcella, I believe you're thinking every minute about
Kraill."

"I--can't help it," she said in a low voice. "They're--good thoughts,
now."

He looked at