Coming along, arm in arm with him, she had been thinking of him, even while she spoke earnestly of other things.  Would she ever see him again, she wondered with a sinking of the heart, would she ever see him again.  Never had he thought or care for himself, never would he shrink from fear of consequences if it seemed to him that a certain course was “straight.”  She would not have him shrink, of course.  He was dear to her because he was what he was, and yet, and yet, it pained her so to think that she nevermore might see him.  Seldom she saw him it was true, only now and then, years between, but she always hoped to see him.  What if the hope left her!  What should she do if she should see him again nevermore?

The kaleidoscope of her memories showed to her one scene, one of the episodes that had gone to make up her character, to strengthen her devotion:  the whirring of a sewing machine in a lamp-lit room and a life-romance told to the whirring, the fate of a woman as Geisner’s was the fate of a man.  A romance of magnificent fidelity, of heroic sacrifice illumined by a passionate love, of a husband followed to the land of his doom from that sad isle of the Atlantic seas, of prison bars worn away by the ceaseless labour of a devoted woman and of the cruel storm that beat the breath from her loved one as freed and unfettered he fled to liberty and her!  She heard again the whirr of the machine, saw again the lamplight shine on the whitening head majestic still.  For Ned, while he lived, no matter where, she would toil so.  Though all the world should forget him she would not.  But supposing, after all, she never saw him more.  What should she do?  What should she do?  And yet, she did not know yet that she loved him.

They walked along, side by side, close together, through the dull weary streets, by barrack-rows of houses wrapped in slumber or showing an occasional light; through thoroughfares which the windows of the shops that thrive, owl-like, at night still made brilliant; down the long avenue of trim-clipped trees whereunder time-defying lovers still sat whispering; past the long garden wall, startling as they crossed the road a troop of horses browsing for fallen figs; along the path that winds, water-lapped, under the hollowed rocks that shelter nightly forlorn outcasts of Sydney.  She saw it all as they passed along and she did not see it.  Afterwards she could recall every step they took, every figure they passed, every tree and seat and window and lamp-post on the way.

At one corner a group of men wrangled drunkenly outside a public-house.  Down one deserted street another drunkard staggered, cursing with awful curses a slipshod woman who kept pace with him on the pavement and answered him with nerveless jeers.  Just beyond a man overtook them, walking swiftly, his tread echoing as he went; he turned and looked at her as he passed; he had a short board and wore a “hard hitter.”  Then there was a girl plying her sorry trade, talking