“Hell, who couldn’t? But if you’re in a proposing mood, why not put the hard word on some of the widowers or bachelors in Byron? There must be a few around somewhere.” His shell of hardness was setting with every word he said, and he was beginning to feel as if he might extricate himself from this most embarrassing situation without losing either his freedom or his self-respect.

“That would be a fate worse than Missalonghi, because it would be no different. I’ve chosen you because you’re living exactly the kind of life I want to live – away from people, away from houses and smugness and gossip. Believe me, Mr. Smith, I have no intention of cramping your style – on the contrary, I want you to free up mine! I won’t be a millstone around your neck. In fact, I’ll guarantee to leave you alone most of the time. And it wouldn’t be forever, I promise you. A year. Just one little year!”

“So after a year of living the sort of life you’re dying to live, you’re going to pick up and tamely go back to the life you hate?” His tone was sceptical.

Missy drew up her meagre form with profound dignity. “I only have a year to live, Mr. Smith,” she said.

He looked desperately sorry for her, as if he now knew everything about her there was to know.

She pushed her advantage relentlessly. “I understand very well your reluctance to share this paradise – if it were mine, I too would guard it jealously. But try to see my side, please! I am thirty-three years old, and I have never known any of the things most women my age either take for granted or wish they didn’t have at all. I am an old maid! That is the most dreadful fate a woman can suffer, for it goes hand in hand with poverty and lack of beauty. If I had suffered one without the other, some man would have been prepared to marry me, but to suffer both is to be completely undesirable. Yet I know that if I can only get past these handicaps, I have a great deal to offer that most women don’t, because they have no need to. You would enjoy all the advantages, Mr. Smith, for I would be tied to you by the bonds of gratitude and thankfulness, as well as by love. I wish there was some way right at this moment whereby I could show you how little you’d lose by marrying me, and how much you’d gain you don’t even know about. I have good sense, and no puffed-up notion of my own importance. And I would try with might and main to be the nicest of companions for you, as well as the most loving.”

He got up abruptly and went to stand looking out the door, his hands clasped behind his back. “Women,” he said, “are liars, cheats, connivers and fools. I wouldn’t care if I never saw another woman as long as I lived. As for love – I don’t want to be loved! I just want to be left alone!” This cry from the heart he seemed to think was enough, then, rethinking, he added harshly, “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

“Well, Mr. Smith, you are not exactly at the top of the list of Byron’s most eligible men! I have heard you described as everything from a jailbird to an eccentric, and it is common knowledge that you are not rich. Why therefore should I lie?” She opened her purse and fished out the neatly folded piece of paper she had appropriated from Dr. Parkinson’s desk, then got up from her chair and walked across to join him at the door. “Here. Read this. You do know I’m ill, because you were there when I had my first bad turn. And when I met you the other day on my walk, I’m sure I told you I had to go to Sydney to see a heart specialist. Well, this is his report on my condition. I stole it, first of all because I don’t want my mother and aunt to know I’m so sick. I don’t want to become an object of worry for them, I don’t want to be forced into bed and fussed over. So I told them I had a kinked spinal nerve, and if I can keep up the deception, that’s what they’re going to go on thinking is wrong with me. My second reason for stealing it concerns you. I knew I was going to ask you to marry me and I knew I’d need proof of my sincerity. There is no name on it except the doctor’s, I know, but if you look at it carefully, you will see no patient’s name has been erased from it, either.”

He took the paper, unfolded it, read it quickly and turned to face her. “Aside from being awfully skinny, you look healthy enough to me,” he said doubtfully.

Missy did some fast thinking, and prayed he was no medical expert. “Why, between my turns I am healthy enough! Mine is not the sort of heart trouble that saps the strength, it’s more like – like – like having little strokes. The valves – stick – and – and when they do, the blood stops flowing. That I gather is what’s going to kill me. I don’t know any more than that – doctors never want to tell you anything. I suppose they find it hard enough to tell you you’re going to die.” She heaved a sigh, and began to scale histrionic heights with the aplomb of an actress. “I shall just go out like a light one day!” Her eyes lifted to his wistfully. “I don’t want to die at Missalonghi!” she cried pitifully. “I want to die in the arms of the man I love!”

He was a born fighter, so he tried a different tack. “How about a second opinion? Doctors can be wrong.”

“What for?” countered Missy. “If I only have a year to live, I do not want to spend it traipsing from one doctor to another!” A big tear fell down her cheek, while others still swimming with telling effect threatened to follow its lead. “Oh, Mr. Smith, I want to spend my last year happily!”

He groaned the groan of a condemned man. “For God’s sake, woman, don’t cry!”

“Why not?” sobbed Missy, scrabbling up her sleeve for her handkerchief. “I think I have every right to cry!”

“Then cry, damn you!” he said, goaded beyond endurance, and marched out of the door.

Missy stood mopping her tears, eyes following him through them as he strode to the far side of the clearing and then disappeared from view. Head down, she returned to her chair and finished her cry with no more appreciative audience than a large blow-fly. After which, she didn’t know what to do. Was he coming back? Was he hiding somewhere watching to see her leave before coming back?

Suddenly she felt very tired, utterly dispirited. All that, and no result. So much for Una’s encouragement. So much for stolen reports. So much for her bright vision of emancipation. She sighed, and had never meant a sigh more, or sighed more. No use staying here. She wasn’t wanted.

She let herself out of the cabin quietly, and made sure that she closed the door. It was gone two o’clock, and she had a nine-mile walk, all uphill, all difficult terrain; it would be late before she arrived back at Missalonghi.

“Yet I don’t feel sorry I tried,” she said aloud. “It was worth a try, I know it was.”

“Miss Wright!”

She turned, hope kindling and blazing.

“Hold on, I’ll drive you home.”

“Thank you, I can walk,” she said, not stiffly or huffily, just in her old colourlessly polite manner.

By this he had reached her side, and put his hand beneath her elbow. “No, it’s too late and too hard a walk, especially for you. Sit here while I harness up.” And he deposited her on the same tree stump where she had sat waiting for him.

She really was too tired to argue, and perhaps too tired to face the walk, so she made no demur. When he was ready, he lifted her up into the cart as easily as if she had been a child.

“This only goes to prove what I’ve been telling myself lately,” he said as he turned the horses out of the clearing onto the track. “I need a smaller vehicle, a sulky or a gig. It’s a damned nuisance to have to use both horses and a big cart unless I’ve got a heavy load.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re right,” she said meaninglessly.

“Angry?”

Her face turned to his, its expression purely surprised. “No! Why should I be?”

“Well, you didn’t meet with much luck, did you?”