Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/203

Mrs. Gird, who was every one’s friend, yet had partialities of her own. She held human nature to be a dear and comfortable as well as amusing thing, but even she preferred to observe it through the veilings of civilisation rather than to contemplate its proportions in the rough. Such is the exaction of sex. The brutal did not dismay her, but it affected her animal spirits, and keen as was her sense of humour, it frequently proved inadequate to the naked problems of life. Of what kind was the soul of her—a tragic, a mocking, a tender thing—none could say, though many conjectured. Only one man had been permitted to gaze into that depth, and it closed and sealed itself for ever on the day that his shattered body was carried into the narrow house. To the sensitive the tragedy of the thing lay in that the woman made no sign. Neither at the time nor afterwards did she show a wound. Her face was turned to the future, and if the past ever rose like a ghost in her path, at least no one knew of it but herself. She made no confidences. That sin and suffering were; that it was necessary