“Please understand,” I pled. “I never thought of you. The book is not real. The girl is only make-believe, and Harold Beecham a figment of imagination.”

“That’s what is so nice,” he laughed. “Make-believe and life are sometimes the same thing. You are Sybylla Melvyn, I am Harold Beecham, and not going to relinquish my advantage.”

What was I to do? I had a wild desire for flight, but he slipped into the doorway and was too big for me to pass. Was there anyone in all the world who would understand the mess I was in, or my agony of sensitiveness? I jammed my lips together to keep them steady, and sat down despairingly. Oh, why didn’t he understand; and how I could have adored him if he had!

“I’d like to put you in my waistcoat pocket and keep you safe,” he said, not laughing any more. “It suits me all to pieces to get into the show. I can give you so many things that you’ll soon forget you ever wrote a book.”

“Please go away where you won’t see me any more,” I said. “I am terribly upset by what has happened. Goodnight!”

He did not try to detain me. I went to my room. He slipped a note under my door before he went to bed: “The only thing doubtful is my age, otherwise you have made me the proudest man in Australia.”

I lay awake all night shivering with distress and listening to the mopokes and willy wagtails. A strayed cow was as sleepless as myself, and told the world. A piffling wind sucked the blind against the window panes and teetered in the leaves of the trees. Pa snored and was chid by Ma. All these sounds measured the silence of the night which at length was terminated by the waking poultry, and I had to face the day and Harold Beecham. Fortunately he departed early to inspect stock, as he had grass to spare. On other days he attended the sales in Goulburn, which is a big centre. He returned incredible distances to spend the nights at ’Possum Gully. The surplus condition was knocked off those flying ponies.

Grandma took a hand presently. Possibly Aunt Jane had reported, though Aunt Jane was jolly good for an old codger, and carried on her combats with me single-handed without tittle-tatting. Grandma seemed to stamp over Ma and be as contemptuous of her as Ma is of me. It was disgraceful, she said, for a girl to be so much talked about as Sybylla was. What on earth could Ma be doing to allow it? She did not like to hear of me attracting Henry Beauchamp, a dirty old fellow who could cast his eye on married women, and who should have had a wife of his own long ago, seeing he had plenty to keep one.

Bang, bang, went romance under Grandma’s touch!

She could not sleep at night for fear she would hear of me coming to harm. I was sick of this “coming to harm” notion. According to it girls have always to be chaperoned or armed against men’s ravening. My experience so far has contained no hint of such unbuttonedness. Not one of my lovers ever put his hand on me except to my toe to toss me to horse back. As for a kiss, I should have fled in horror from one so unchaste as to suggest such a thing. In my code, a kiss could come only after definite engagement. Pa always said, “It doesn’t matter what a man says to you: words cannot hurt us if we have sense, but never allow a man to place his hand on you. Make him show his respect by keeping his distance.”