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The Strange Attraction

could not affect if she chose. But she was not planning any onslaught on the peace that Dane had made for himself. Her thoughts did not run on into any sentimental future. All she thought was that it would be nice to have him to talk to sometimes, perhaps to ride with, while she stayed in Dargaville.

III

The next Saturday evening Dane Barrington wandered back and forth on the beach beside the surf, so near it that he had to dodge unexpectedly encroaching runs of frothy water. He wore a rough tweed suit without a vest, as the air had been chilled a little by heavy rain the night before, but he was hatless as usual, and his low collar was loosely held by a dull red tie.

His mind was clouded by one of the moods of boredom and loneliness that he could so seldom fight off, and he was playing with the impulse to go up to Mac’s. He cursed himself that he could never go light-heartedly now in the matter of folly. Many men he knew, Davenport Carr, for instance, could drift into a night of drinking with gaiety, and did not have to pay afterwards the price he did. What a wretched creature man was with a body that was never equal to his imagination. There were physical limits to his capacity for eating, drinking and forgetting; physical limits to his capacity for love. And, worse still, there was that awful mental limitation, satiety.

He reflected that it was pitiful that he did not know what to do with himself in this mood. He could get just so far in fighting it and then everything went smash in his brain. He turned off the beach, walking towards his tent.

Rounding a hillock and mounted on a bay horse, Valerie nearly ran over him.