under command of my brain and my tongue—as it should be. What else can rule it?”
“My God!” cried Murray. “Don’t you see that I don’t know? I don’t know what it is that—that has got hold of me. It is only that I know that there is more on earth—that there is more in the day and night than there used to be, Ormond; everything is so awfully alive. If you listen you can hear the hills breathing.”
Ormond came to his feet, and took Murray by the shoulders.
“You go away down to Dunedin,” he said. “Get an exchange. Go and marry someone—anyone. Do something that’ll get you run in on your own account. Take a town-beat, and go to music-halls every night. In a week you’ll find that your own life holds enough interest for you to sharpen your teeth on.”
Murray laughed, kicking loose stones down to the stream with a clatter.
“Haven’t you seen a tired kid crying its heart out, with no one in all the house able to give it what it wants, because it doesn’t know, itself? You can’t help me, Ormond, because I don’t know what I want. I don’t know.”
Ormond tapped his pipe stem on his teeth, looking round on his world as he knew it. The tall straight cabbage trees on the slope were familiar, and the rising terrace on yellow terrace to the ragged flint hills beyond. The greys of sand and shingle down the Changing
