"
"Then I have another. Why so often and so systematically pretend that
you never were in Australia at all?"
"That is a question which I implore you not to press!"
The two answers, so like each other in verbal form, were utterly
dissimilar in the manner of their utterance. Suddenly, and for the first
time in all her knowledge of him, his cynical aplomb had fallen from the
man like a garment. One moment he was brazening past deceit with a
smiling face; the next, he was in earnest, even he, and that mocking
voice vibrated with deep feeling.
"I should have thought all the more of you for being an Australian,"
continued Rachel, vaguely touched at the change in him, "I who am proud
of being one myself. What harm could it have done, my knowing that?"
"You are not the only one from whom I have hidden it," said Steel,
still in a low and altered voice.
"Yet you brought home all those keepsakes of the bush?"
"But I thought better of them, and have never even unpacked them all, as
you must have seen for yourself."
"Yet your mysterious visitor of the other day--"
"Another Australian, of course; indeed, another man who worked upon my
own run.
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