The girl saw, too; with the unconscious bluntness of a singularly direct nature, he had stripped her scruples bare, and their littleness horrified Olivia. The moral cowardice of her hesitation came home to her with an insupportable pang, and her mind was made up before his last sentences put her face in flames. "You are wrong," she could only murmur; "oh, you are dreadfully wrong!" "I am right," he answered bitterly, "and _you_ are right. No wonder you dread the hard things that would be said of you! Take away the name and the money, and what am I? A back-block larrikin--a common stockman!" "The man for me," said Olivia hoarsely. "Ah, yes, if I were not such a public match!" "Whatever you are--whatever you may be--if you want me still----" "Want you! I have wanted you from the first. I shall want you till the last!" Her reply was indistinct; her tears were falling fast; he took her two white hands, but even them he did not touch with his lips. A great silence held them both, and all the world; the island willows kissed the stream; in the sheet of gold beyond, a fish leapt, and the ripple reached the boat in one long thin fold. The girl spoke first. "We need not be in a hurry to tell everybody," she began; but the words were retracted in the same breath. "What am I saying? Of course we will tell. Oh, what a contempt you must have for me!" "I love you," he answered simply. "I am too happy to live. It's all too good to be true. Me of all men--the old bushman!" She looked lovingly on his bearded and sunburnt face, shining as she had never seen it shine before. "No; it's the other way about," she said. "I am not half good enough for you--you who were so brave yesterday in your trouble--who have been so simple always in your prosperity. It was enough to turn any one's head, but you--ah, I don't only love you. I admire you, dear; may God help me to make you happy!" They stayed much longer on the lake, finally disembarking on its uttermost shore, because Olivia was curious to see how the hut would look in the first rosy light of her incredible happiness. And when they came to it, the sunlight glinted on the new iron roofing; the pine-trees exhaled their resin in the noon-day heat following the midnight rain; and the shadows were shot with golden shafts, where all was golden to the lovers' eyes. Jack made a diffident swain; it was the girl who slipped her hand into his. "You will never pull it down?" she said. "We will use it for a summer-house, and to remind you of your old life. And one day you will take me out to the Riverina, and show me the hut you really lived in, and all your old haunts. Oh, I shouldn't mind if we had both to go out there for good! A hut would take far less looking after than the Towers, and I should have you much more to myself. What fun it would be!"