“I do find my way out of difficult situations. Some people are like that. I find it a little uncomfortable to live here as I do … so close to the others and yet different.”

“Well, your place is a refuge to those in need … like Morwenna at the moment.”

“And you, Angel?”

“I am sharing in the luxury.”

“I wish you would share it … always.”

I was startled yet not really surprised. I had tried to hide from myself my feelings which were becoming more and more difficult to suppress. I loved Gervaise, I kept telling myself; but something had happened on our honeymoon. I had thought so often of Madame Bougerie sitting at her reception desk … trusting us … liking us … and then he had been able to go off like that without a great deal of compunction. He had said he was going to pay later, but would he have done so? Yes, that was when my feelings for him had begun to change.

And then … seeing that feverish look in his eyes … that need always to gamble … irritated me and made me impatient. It was like a disease.

I tried to pass it off lightly. “I shall enjoy it while it lasts,” I said.

“I should never have come here in the first place,” he went on. “I should have gone back to Cornwall. Perhaps I should have stayed there … had an estate nearby. We should have seen each other … often.”

“Well, that would have been very pleasant, I am sure.”

He took my hand suddenly and gripped it hard. “It ought to have worked out that way. It might … but for …”

“The man in the pool?” I said.

“You were so ill. They said it was fever. I knew it was due to all that … They were afraid you were going to die. I came to see you lying there … flushed. You looked so vulnerable lying there with your cropped hair and eyes wild and you looked at me and you cried, ‘No … no.’ They thought my visits disturbed you and they sent me away. I knew that I should always remind you … and you couldn’t get better while you were reminded. So as soon as I convinced myself that you were beginning to recover I went away.”

“Everything would have been different if I hadn’t gone to the pool that day. That’s life, isn’t it? One little incident can spark off a train of events … changing people’s lives for generations. It’s an awesome thought.”

“I’d like to change the course of my life, Angel.”

“Most of us would.”

“What I mean is I don’t want events to push me this way and that, because I believe I am the master of my own life. I will push aside those things that threaten me … I will go where I want to. But if only I could live that particular time of my life again …”

“It’s an old complaint, Ben. But when something happens it is there indelibly … forever.”

“It is too late … all those wasted years too late, but I love you, Angel, and I shall never love anyone else as I love you.”

“Please don’t say that, Ben.”

“Why not? It’s the truth. Do you believe me?”

“I am not sure.”

“Do you want to believe me?”

I was silent. I was not sure, and I thought: Yes, I do. Because I love you, too.

Neither of us spoke after that for some little time. I listened to the murmur of the light breeze … ruffling the grass near the creek.

Then at length he said: “Tell me truthfully, Angel. Are you happy?”

“Well … I think I could be if I were at home. Everything seemed all right there.”

“With Gervaise, you mean?”

“Gervaise is one of the kindest people I have ever met.”

He nodded. “I know about the debts. He told me himself. He’s indebted to my grandfather. I understand that.”

“It doesn’t seem so bad as it is Uncle Peter. We know he won’t suddenly descend on us and demand payment or else face the consequences.”

“If he found gold …”

“We could go home.”

“He might want to stay for more.”

“As you did.”

“It would be different. I vowed I would not return until I had my fortune. I found some wealth and it gave me this … But it was not what I had set out for. I couldn’t settle for less. It would be weakness and to a certain extent failure.”

“And you could not be seen to be weak. You have found enough to come home and perhaps start some enterprise. But you vowed to come back immensely rich … because that was the task you set yourself.”

“I do not care to be beaten, Angel.”

“So you will stay here until your goal has been reached … and if you do not hit the target that will be forever.”

“There are two things I want, Angel. That fortune, you know of. I want to find it in my mine. I want to have one of those discoveries which men had in the beginning which brought them out here in the hundreds. That is one thing. But what I want more than that is you.”

“I wish you would not talk in that way.”

“I want to be absolutely frank with you.”

“It is impossible, Ben. I am married to Gervaise.”

“And you don’t love him.”

“I do.”

“Not entirely. He has disappointed you. I can see that.”

He had turned to me and I was in his arms. He kissed me wildly. I was so taken aback that I could not think clearly. All I knew was that I wanted to stay with him, close … like this. I was accepting that which I had refused to face for some time … ever since I had seen Ben again.

Gervaise had been good to me, a kind and tender husband. I had thought I was in love with him. I had been too young and inexperienced to know my true feelings. I had not really known Gervaise. I had only begun to on our honeymoon when I had first discovered his weakness—not only his obsession with gambling, but a certain amoral attitude to life which could allow him to go off without paying the money he owed to people who trusted him, and gambling with money which was not really his.

I was closely bound to Ben. I always should be because of what we had endured together. I began to think about what might have been but for that man in the pool. It all came back to that. I had thought of it ever since it happened as the most momentous event in my life; and I saw now that it had certainly been so. But for it everything would have been very different.

I withdrew myself.

“We must not meet like this, Ben,” I said.

“We must,” he replied, “often. I must have something of you, Angel.”

“No,” I said.

He looked at me intently and replied: “Yes.”

“What good can it do?”

“It can make me happy for a while. You too perhaps.”

I shook my head.

“You love me,” he said. It was a statement rather than a question.

“Ben, I have not seen you for years … and then I come out here …”

“And you knew at once. Don’t let’s waste time denying the truth, Angel. Let’s think what we can do.”

“There is nothing. We shall go away from here. You will stay in your comfortable house until you have made that vast fortune. It will probably take years and years and then we shall both be old enough and wise enough to laugh at this folly.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“What else?”

“I never accept defeat.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“I am in love with you and you with me. You are married to a nice decent man. He’s a gambler. He’s a loser, Angel. I know one when I see one. Your life with him will be a continual running away from creditors. You feel you can live with that now. It has brought you to this primitive society because you had to run away. Leave him now. I shall be waiting for you.”

“You can’t really mean that.”

“What I mean is that we should not sit down meekly and accept what life deals out. You have married this man. I admit he has charm. He is gracious and courteous, the perfect English gentleman. But I will tell you what your life with him will be. I can see it clearly. I know men. He’s a loser, I tell you. He’s different from your friend Justin Cartwright.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is a man who knows how to win.”

“To win?”

“I’ve heard things. He has good luck at the table. Every time he plays he walks off with some winnings. He’s more likely to make his fortune at the tables than in the mines.”

“How do you know this?”

“They play at the saloon. Old Featherstone runs a profitable business with his saloon. He’s one of those who has a way of making money and isn’t winding up the windlasses either. There are all sorts of ways to fortune and your friend Justin is not too bad at one of them.”

“Perhaps he’ll want to go home. He is worried about Morwenna.”

“I think that’s likely. The London clubs would be more profitable than a township in the outback. Prospecting for gold by day and winning at the tables by night … well, it’s a pity for Gervaise’s sake that a little of Justin’s luck doesn’t rub off on him. Angel, you’ve got to leave him. Tell him. If we talked to him and told him how things were he would understand. He is that sort.”

“I think you are mad, Ben.”

“Yes … mad for you, Angel. I knew it would be like this between us as soon as you stepped off that ship. I thought of you often … but as a little girl. I was attracted then … I knew there was something between us … and when I saw you again I was sure of it.”

“We should not be talking like this.”

“My dear Angel, you are not in your parents’ drawing room now. Are you going to let life buffet you which way it wants to?”

“I am married to Gervaise. I love Gervaise. I will never leave him. He is a good man. He is kind and he has been good to me.”

“You will always be at the mercy of his obsession with gambling. Believe me, I know. I have seen this sort of situation before. It mustn’t happen to you, Angel.”

“And you? Are you not obsessed? You vowed to make a fortune and you say you will not leave here until you do. Isn’t that rather the same?”

“No. I am going to. … He never will.”

“How do you know? He might strike gold tomorrow.”

“Suppose he does? Suppose he goes home? I guarantee that he would lose the lot in a very short time. A couple of years … perhaps three. That’s the pattern of a gambler’s life.”

“I do not want to talk like this, Ben.”

“I never sit down and accept defeat,” he told me vehemently. “We were meant for each other. Never forget that.”

“It is foolish to talk in this way.”

“It is truthful. I love you. I want you. One day we shall be together.”

As he spoke he picked up a handful of earth and let it slip through his fingers. “I’ll find what I seek in this land,” he went on. “And one day you and I will be together.”

I said: “We must go back now. I don’t want to leave Morwenna too long. Look at your hands. What do you expect, playing with the soil like that?”

He looked towards the creek and said: “I’ll wash them in there.”

I watched him, as he knelt by the creek, and I tried hard to subdue the disturbance he had created in me.

He was right. I loved him. I knew that full well now. I doubted his faults were any less than those of Gervaise; but his would be the faults of strength; Gervaise’s those of weakness. Gervaise acted not because he wanted to but because the weakness in him made him submit to his obsession; Ben acted through strength and the certainty that the world was made for him. What was there to choose? From a point of morality … nothing. It was a matter of strength and weakness. But what sense was there in making comparisons? Love came without being bidden. One did not really love for that sort of reason.

He was a long time at the creek. I saw him dabbling his hands in the water. I rose and, going to my horse, untethered it and mounted. I must get back to Morwenna.

He seemed reluctant to leave the creek.

“I’m going now,” I called.

He rubbed his hands on his coat as he turned.

He was very quiet and seemed to be deep in thought as we rode back to the house.

He is regretting his outspokenness, I thought. He is realizing that he should never have said what he did.

I was glad he had, though. It was a warning to me. In view of those feelings he had expressed for me and mine for him, I should have to take care.

The next day there was excitement throughout the township.

One-Eye Thompson and Tom Cassidy had found gold—not just a speck or two but the real thing.

One-Eye—so called for obvious reasons, but no one seemed to know how he had lost his right eye—was a man who did not mingle very much with his fellows. He lived in a shack which he shared with his partner, Tom Cassidy; they were usually a taciturn pair, and they were rarely at the saloon unless it was to drink a mug of ale and then depart immediately afterwards.