The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

214 THE FOOT OF TIME
Edith stamped her foot. "I won't do anything
of the kind What has it to do with Auntie? It
concerns me. Why did you stay away for over
a year and never even write?"
"As to that, I was practically marooned. The
island was uninhabited by whites—no means of
communication whatsoever. I suppose you have
heard Pinkerton was killed in a huricane, our boat
smashed, preventing me from getting away
"Oh, you poor thing! But—but that isn't disgraceful.
Why—oh, yes, I see now."
"It's worse than that. It would take more than
that to have kept me away from you—you know
that—you must know it. What the devil do I care
for idiotic convention. It's this way—I don't
know how to tell you."
"You haven't a child by any chance, have you?"
Edith asked bitterly.
"Just that," admitted Bruce gravely.
"Bruce! Oh! I don't want to see any more of
you. You'd better go. Oh! I hate you. Repulsive
man! Go! Do you hear? Don't come near me,
I can't bear it. Leave me; I hate you!"
The boy looked calmly at her. He had better
leave her now. How magnificent she looked!
Like a tiger at bay, her lovely eyes flashed anger
at him. A mad desire to take her to him, to crush
the words from her mouth with his kisses, came
to him, to be as speedily put aside. The time was
not yet. But if ever Bruce had any doubt about
his intention to eventually fight again and win her,
the scruple disappeared now.
THE FOOT OF TIME 215
"Before I go, Edith, I just want to tell you this.
You cannot, of course, understand
"No, I certainly cannot," Edith interrupted
him.
"I suppose no girl could, but nothing can alter
my love for you
"Love! You don't know what the word means."
"Nothing can alter it," Bruce repeated, disregarding
her interruption. "Please know that, now
and always."
"I hate you! Go!" And Edith stamped her foot
in her burning indignation.
So Bruce turned, and without another word
passed out, jumped aboard the Curl Curl at the
jetty, and later returned to his engineering study
With renewed eagerness and ambition. That tigerish
outburst on the part of Edith was just what he
Wanted. You knew where you were when a woman
Went off the deep end like that. He'd marry the
darling yet. But, like his father, young Bruce suffered
with no inferiority complex. Edith Burne
Was further from him, irrespective of her father's
certain opposition, than he realised. Your Edith
Burnes' do not succumb easily. Perhaps never, unless
the unexpected happens and fate takes a hand
in the game.
Florence Tooth returned from her visiting, found
Edith a distraught figure, tragic in her vexation.
A child! The sheer horror of the thing. Nothing
could get over that. It would constitute a life-
time nightmare. Then the girl's thoughts came to
considering the slight possibility of the child dying.