start south. He should have gone north. The next morning he took the train back to Auckland, and was almost afraid to walk out of it, lest she should be at the station. He Hurried into the nearest hotel, and found that a boat was leaving that night for Whangarei. He had some food seat up to his room where he stayed till it was time to go aboard. He talked to the first officer at the wheel till two in the morning. At Whangarei he took the boat train to Kawakawa, not that he wanted to see Kawakawa again, nobody would, but he had this terrible craving to keep moving, to keep a constant succession of objects passing before his eyes so that he might not see Valerie’s face. He was so afraid he would be drawn back to the mission station before she left, so afraid he would lose his nerve and go to beg her to stay.
At Kawakawa he hired a horse and buggy and started to drive towards Hokianga. But that night, in a little pub he met two men from the Far North on their way to enlist, and he and they drank themselves into forgetfulness of all the things that trouble man. In the morning they had gone on, and he was left to lie ill and wretched for three days, nursed by the fat wife of the pub owner, who bestowed the tenderness of a kind and sentimental heart upon this strange man who seemed to have lost his hold upon the earth.
Coming finally to his miserable self, Dane saw that it was more than a week since he had written to Valerie. He sent an enigmatical telegram to Doctor Steele, and the answer came back in one word “Gone.”
Dane drove back to Kawakawa, took the train to Whangarei, was driven to Tangiteroria, and took the little black steamer down the Wairoa to Dargaville. It was nine o’clock in the evening when he arrived there. He went at once to his launch and turned her homewards.
