"I should think," said Harriet, "you'd soon know that door when you see it."
"Oh, yes," said Richard. He had not told her the worst of the encounter. He never told her the worst, nor her nor anybody.
Jack was looking from one to the other to see how much each knew.
"Was it a specially bad blow-up?" he said, in his quiet voice, that had a lurking tone of watchfulness in it.
"Oh, yes, final," laughed Richard. "I am even going to leave Australia."
"When?"
"I think in six weeks."
There was a silence for some moments.
"You've not booked your berths yet?" asked Jack.
"No. I must go up to Sydney."
Again Jack waited before he spoke. Then he said:
"What's made you settle on going?"
"I don't know. I feel it's my fate to go now."
"Ha, your fate!" said Harriet. "It's always your fate with you. If it was me it would be my foolish restlessness."
Jack looked at her with another quick smile, and a curious glance of dark recognition in his eyes, almost like a caress. Strangely apart, too, as if he and she were in an inner dark circle, and Somers was away outside.
"Don't you want to go, Mrs Somers?" he asked.
"Of course I don't. I love Australia," she protested.
"Then don't you go," said Jack. "You stop behind."
When he lowered his voice it took on a faint, indescribable huskiness. It made Harriet a little uneasy. She watched Lovat. She did not like Jack's new turn of husky intimacy. She wanted Richard to rescue her.
"Ha!" she said. "He'd never be able to get through the world without me."
"Does it matter?" said Jack, grinning faintly at her and keeping the husky note in his voice. "He knows his own mind—or his fate. You stop here. We'll look after you."
But she watched Richard. He was hardly listening. He was thinking again that Jack was feeling malevolent
