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

228 THE FOOT OF TIME
from abroad the girl had lost her wish to marry
him. Now more than ever did the consciousness
of this curious change take possession of her. The
girl hated herself for still loving him, and fought
against it, but found from the experiment that the
subject were best forgotten. The more it was
fought, the greater was the memory of it retained,
and so to the utmost of her ability Edith put it
from her.
But now pity, which is akin to the deeper sentiment,
were less needed in that the results of her
lover's indiscretions had been swept away. A strong,
self-reliant Edith Burne took the air at Mascot that
afternoon and flew better than ever before. In the
higher atmosphere the exhilaration of her mood was
so absolute that, strapped in as she was, the girl
contemplated looping the loop. With the idea
came a feeling that though she was in what she
was pleased to call one of her strong moods, yet
it was by no manner of means a happy strength.
After all, what did it matter—what did anything
matter? Edith swung the joy-stick over and kept
it there—kept it there till in a haze she was upside
down and climbing up the air hill, and so back
again. It was almost too easy. The only difficulty
was knowing when she was right again. The air
seemed to have no top and no bottom. If relatively
upside down to Mascot, she might be "set" so far as
Mars was concerned. The idea made her lightheaded,
and to the amazement of those watching
her below, she looped again, and then volplaned
down at all too steep an angle. However, she
THE FOOT OF TIME 229
straightened up well enough and made a perfect
landing, to the unqualified praise of the authorities
whose plane she had hired.
To the plaudits Edith returned but a perfunctory
acknowledgment. She told herself that she was a
silly, reckless girl; that she had not been clever at
all, and that it was a wonder she hadn't killed herself.
"I think I'm miserable," she mused, yet returned
to her parents' home at Orange stronger
than ever, primed with self-confidence.
And there Bruce, choosing the very worst
moment it was possible for him to choose, totally
oblivious of the fact that his mistress and child
had gone the way of all flesh—been gathered to
their fathers in the South Sea scourge—went down
to see her. Inconsolable, the poor young fool determined
he could wait no longer. He must see her,
must repeat his declaration of unrequited love for
her, must know one way or the other how matters
stood for him.
The journey from the Central Station, Sydney,
to Orange had been a particularly tedious one the
previous afternoon. A long wait at Katoomba, the
mountain city perched three thousand odd feet
above the level of Sydney Harbour, had not helped
matters, and Edith was feeling overwrought.
Burne was in one of his most difficult moods—
out with his daughter, yet pleased with her, too;
chock-full and brimming over with his own selfrighteousness—a
difficult man to handle.
Bruce was shown into the drawing room, a commodious
apartment rarely used by the family. The
place savoured of the glass case. There was no
romance about that room, and the boy felt it.