her fault. The trouble
was that I never liked to 'give in' or go half-way to make it up--not
half-way--it was all the way or nothing with our natures.

'If I don't make a stand now,' I'd say, 'I'll never be master. I gave up
the reins when I got married, and I'll have to get them back again.'

What women some men are! But the time came, and not many years after,
when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white and still; and, amongst
other things, I kept saying, 'I'll give in, Mary--I'll give in,' and
then I'd laugh. They thought that I was raving mad, and took me from the
room. But that time was to come.

As I walked down the creek track in the moonlight the question rang in
my ears again, as it had done when I first caught sight of the house
that evening--

'Why did I bring her here?'

I was not fit to 'go on the land'. The place was only fit for some
stolid German, or Scotsman, or even Englishman and his wife, who had no
ambition but to bullock and make a farm of the place. I had only drifted
here through carelessness, brooding, and discontent.

I walked on and on till I was more than half-way to the only
neighbours--a wretched selector's family, about four miles down the
creek,--and I thought I'd go on to the house and see if they had any
fresh meat.

A mile or two farther I saw the loom of the bark hut they lived in, on
a patchy clearing in the scrub, and heard the voice of the selector's
wife--I had seen her several times: she was a gaunt, haggard Bushwoman,
and, I supposed, the reason why she hadn't gone mad through hardship
and loneliness was that she hadn't either the brains or the memory to go
farther than she could see through the trunks of the 'apple-trees'.

'You, An-nay!' (Annie.)

'Ye-es' (from somewhere in the gloom).

'Didn't I tell yer to water them geraniums!'

'Well, didn't I?'

'Don't tell lies or I'll break yer young back!'

'I did, I tell yer--the water won't soak inter the ashes.'

Geraniums were the only flowers I saw grow in the drought out there.
I remembered this woman had a few dirty grey-green leaves behind some
sticks against the bark wall near the door; and in spite of the sticks
the fowls used to get in and scratch beds under the geraniums, and
scratch dust over them, and ashes were thrown there--with an idea of
helping the flower, I suppose; and greasy dish-water, when fresh water
was scarce--till you might as well try to water a dish of fat.

Then the woman's voice aga