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would like this place more.’
    ‘And now?’ Roper asked.
    ‘Now I still do, sir. I mean—Well, we can’t all be the same, sir.’
    ‘I agree. But you know, Brown, I have a feeling that you’re a great deal different from me.’
    ‘You mean because I get nauseated?’
    ‘That—among other things,’ he said enigmatically.
    ‘I’m sorry, sir.'
    ‘Well, we’ll see about it later, I think.’ Roper was at the controls now and he drove off so quickly that Georgina was left standing there.
    But not for long. Going into the hut, she shut and then locked it, then she draped the windows with anything she could find, and filled the bath dish to the brim. She, too, intended to wash off the smell of the poor bogged beast. She emerged at last, well soaped, well scrubbed but still greenish, yet with her mind made up.
    I can’t go through with it, she thought. I’ll leave tonight.
     

CHAPTER SIX
    Georgina packed the few things she would need at the Brydens’ until Craig could pick her up and take her south with him, then the rest she bundled neatly and placed behind the door to be called for later. She would have to travel to Craig’s old home by cycle, and it could be up to a hundred kilometres away, perhaps more, so there Was no question of any large luggage; there must be strictly only essentials, and they would have to fit on the back of the bike.
    After packing and unpacking several exasperating times she made the bundle small enough to stow into a haversack to be shoved behind the seat, but even then it looked conspicuous, and all she could hope was that she met no one, or if she did, that in the dark—it must get dark sometime— they would not notice her.
    Whom she meant by ‘they’, Georgina shrank from analysing.
    Good manners obliged her to leave a note. Since there was no need to try to live a lie now, she simply penned, not typed it.
    ‘Dear Mr Roper, I am sorry if I have inconvenienced you, but I feel I cannot stay here any longer. If the things I have left behind are a hindrance, or if you need the hut, please put them outside. I will remove them at my first opportunity. Regarding the cycle, it will be returned in good order and refuelled. Thank you. G. Brown.’
    She decided not to elaborate on that ‘G’. He could come to any conclusion he liked.
    Everything was done at last, and she went and sat at the door. She wished the sun would stop balancing on the horizon. She always loved this poised moment before curtains, as it were, the rising climax to night, but this evening she could have pushed the sun over the edge in her impatience to be gone.
    At last, in its usual over-abundance of colour it sank, and at once the blue of evening came in. She would allow a few minutes more to let the blue deepen, then she would push off.
    She looked around her at the hut she had occupied so briefly. It was absurd, but already it had come to mean something to her. Her tenseness after her stepfather’s death had left her here, and she had begun to come to terms with herself. Until he, Roper, had come she had known a relaxation she had not known for weeks. Yes, she had been well on the way to loving this little brown strictly masculine room. She saw that she had left the jam jar of Salvation Jane still there, so she emptied it and put the jar away.
    It was getting darker now. Ordinarily she would have lit the lamp by this and soaked up the comer shadows, but as she would be leaving quite soon it wasn’t worth while.
    Yes—looking around again—she’d been happy here, that is until the arrival of the mighty Roper. It was his right to come, for after all he owned it, but just as he had spoiled Craig’s life and Elva’s life, he had spoiled this period of her life. Some people were like that, they spoiled things. Mighty Roper, the spoiler ! she said to the quickening dusk, and, deciding it was time now, she got up and went out, shut the door behind her on her stacked belongings, then crossed to where she always