But I calmed him down." He looked at
her gravely. "Thank God I was in time!"
"Oh, you are the bravest man in the world!" cried Billie, and, burying
her face in her hands, burst into tears.
"There, there!" said Sam. "There, there! Come come! It's all right now!
There, there, there!"
He knelt down beside her. He slipped one arm round her waist. He patted
her hands.
I have tried to draw Samuel Marlowe so that he will live on the printed
page. I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be
as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will
by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an
Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied
through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright
she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had
caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low,
bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact
that he had erased for ever from Billie's mind that undignified picture
of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another
which showed him brave, resourceful, gallant.
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