e road, walking sadly homewards. At the same time two hands
stretched out of the dense shadow into the lane of moonlight that shone
down an alley way she was passing and that cut a dazzling swath in the
blackness made still blacker by the surrounding brilliancy. "I've been
wondering if you ever would finish that pitch of yours."

It was Ned.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE ROAD TO QUEENSLAND.

While Nellie had been talking temperance to Mr. Hobbs, Ned had been
watching her impatiently from the other side of the street. For an hour
and more he had been prowling up and down, up and down, between the
Phillipses and the Hobbses, having learned from Mrs. Phillips, who looked
wearier than ever, where the Hobbses lived now and why Nellie had gone
there after hardly stopping to swallow her dinner. At seven he had
acquired this information and returned soon after nine to find Nellie
still at the house of sickness, now, alas, the house of death. So he had
paced up and down, up and down, waiting for her. He had seen the Hobbs'
door open at last and had watched impatiently, from the shadow opposite,
the conversation on the door step. His heart gave a great leap as she
stopped across the road full in the moonlight. He saw again the sad stern
face that had lived as an ideal in his memory for two long eventful
years. There was none like her in the whole world to him, not one.

The years had come to her in this stifling city, amid her struggling and
wrestling of spirit, but the strong soul in her had borne her up through
all, she had aged without wearying, grown older and sadder without
withering from her intense womanhood. Broader of hip a little, as Ned
could see with the keen eyes of love, not quite so slender in the waist,
fuller in the uncorsetted bust, more sloping of shoulder as though the
pillared neck had fleshed somewhat at the base; the face, too, had
gathered form and force, in the freer curve of her will-full jaw, in the
sterner compression of fuller lips that told their tale of latent
passions strangely bordering on the cruel, in the sweeter blending of
Celt and Saxon shown in straight nose, strong cheek-bones and well-marked
brows. She trod still with the swinging spring of the bill-people, erect
and careless. Only the white gleam of her collar and a dash of colour in
her hat broke the sombre hue that clothed her, as before, from head to
foot.

Ned devoured her with his eyes as she came rapidly towards him,
unconscious