There was no affectation between us, so I said in comfort: “But my dear girl, you are whiter at heart than many a girl born white. It is only your skin that is dark. Perhaps if in a year or so you did marry Dan it would be the best, for a good woman, no matter what her complexion, will always earn respect. Society may not want you, but you would not want society; and it will be very many years before society hampers life in this part of the bush.” Soosie thought for a few minutes, and then replied with delicate discretion. “I can never marry Dan. Sooner or later he would despise me. It might be all right while I was young, but--we--we--blacks get old very soon. Fancy Dan having an old gin in his house; for he won't be living in a one-roomed hut all his life!” “You are spiteful against yourself, and that's not like you, Soosie.” “I have my feelings. How else may I restrain them?” she petulantly exclaimed. “He must never think of me. It might drive me to the mountain--just to save him from me.” Dan, good fellow, was discreet. He decided to play the laggard in love, realising that any show of impetuosity might frighten Soosie. It came to be understood that in time she might see the wisdom of accepting him, and I, knowing both, and to whom mixed marriages are abhorrent, was convinced that no girl could have been better qualified to fill the position of a bushman's wife. Modest, clever, sympathetic, healthful, none of the stains of the town had ever tarnished her mind. Her voice was that of a well-schooled white girl, and all her perceptions coincided. If the wander lust was to be suppressed for ever, it seemed to me that Soosie must marry, and marry young. While Soosie's demeanour was still the cause of earnest solicitude, a perplexing complication arose. An old man of the camp whence she had been discarded began to do his best to attract her attention. Gifts of birds'-nests, eggs, ferns, orchids in flower, a cassowary chick, neat dilly-bags, gay with crude Pigments, were brought to the house with messages such as this: “That fella 'Pad-oo-byer' he bin gib'em alonga 'Ky-ee-rah.'” “Ky-ee-rah” (the evening star) had been proclaimed to be Soosie's totemic name, and “Pad-oo-byer” we knew as “Duckbill,” because of a fancied resemblance to a platypus. The gifts were tearfully repudiated. They seemed to announce that Soosie, was regarded by her mother's kin as one of themselves, notwithstanding her civilised environment.