There, on an open beach facing the Heads,
Mahony lay with his hat pulled forward to shade his eyes, and with
nothing to do but to scoop up handfuls of the fine coral sand and let it
flow again, like liquid silk, through his fingers. From beneath the brim
he watched the water churn and froth on the brown reefs; followed the
sailing-ships which, beginning as mere dots on the horizon, swelled to
stately white waterbirds, and shrivelled again to dots; drank in, with
greedy nostrils, the mixed spice of warm sea, hot seaweed and aromatic
tea-scrub.
And his strength came back as rapidly as usual. He soon felt well
enough, leaning on Mary's arm, to stroll up and down the sandy roads of
the township; to open book and newspaper; and finally to descend the
cliffs for a dip in the transparent, turquoise sea. At the end of a
month he was at home again, sunburnt and hearty, eager to pick up the
threads he had let fall. And soon Mary was able to make the comfortable
reflection that everything was going on just as before.
In this, however, she was wrong; never, in their united lives, would
things be quite the same again. Outwardly, the changes might pass
unnoticed--though even here, it was true, a certain name had now to be
avoided, with which they had formerly made free. But this was not
exactly hard to do, Purdy having promptly disappeared: they heard at
second-hand that he had at last accepted promotion and gone to
Melbourne. And since Mary had suffered no inconvenience from his
thoughtless conduct, they tacitly agreed to let the matter rest.
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