Over the Blue Mountains by Mary Burchell

I hardly know.”
    “That really isn’t the point,” Max assured her amusedly. “Do you want to go home?”
    When he put it, quite simply like that, she wanted so terribly to go home that she almost choked. The thought of being back among the dear and safe and familiar surroundings, with life in manageable proportions again, seemed so achingly desirable that she thought she must snatch at this fantastically generous offer without pause or thought.
    But then, before she could do so, all that was best and most self-respecting in Juliet came rushing to the surface. By her own impulsive foolishness she had landed herself in this dilemma. Unless she were to own herself a poor, spineless, self-pitying creature, it was by her own efforts that she must get out of it.
    “Thank you very, very much, Mr. Ormathon.” She managed to smile at Max, even though the thought of what she was refusing made her mouth tremble. “But I’d rather stay here and work and find my own way out of this business. I’d never be on good terms with myself again, if I didn’t. It was silly and ill-judged of me to come rushing out here—I know that now—but I’ll make the best of what I have done. When I go back to England, I’ll do so by my own efforts.”
    “Good girl!” Max Ormathon said, and that was all. But he looked at Juliet as though, in some way, he saw her for the first time.
    “I’m sure you won’t regret that,” Carol exclaimed. “I know just what you mean by saying that you couldn’t be on good terms with yourself again if you let this beat you.”
    “Well—” Juliet’s smile was more certain that time “—I’ve got to change fine words into deeds before they mean much, I know. But I can’t believe that I shall not be able to earn my own living here.”
    “Of course you will,” Carol declared.
    “There’ll probably be some formalities,” Max told her, “before you can rank as a wage earner, since you came out here more or less as a visitor, I take it. But I’ll see you through those.”
    “Thank you.” She looked at him that time rather as though she saw him for the first time, and they exchanged a smile of mutual respect and liking, which greatly astonished Juliet when she thought about it afterward.
    “Well, if you’ve both finished your drinks, let’s go and have dinner,” Carol said, rising in one quick, graceful movement from her position on a stool by the fire. “Food always stimulates my ingenuity, and I daresay we shall think up some good ideas between us while we eat.”
    The other two laughed, and together they went into the neighboring dining room.
    As they did so, a gust of wind, shaking the windows, reminded Juliet for a moment of the outside world. Thousands and thousands of miles of unknown country lay outside those windows, and in all this great continent there was hardly a soul she knew—still less one who cared about her. She was alone in a sense she had never before imagined, even in the most frightening dreams of her childhood.
    In spite of her brave words, the most heart-shaking terror seized upon her, and she seemed to see herself lost in an infinity of space—insignificant beyond expression and yet feeling instinctively the primitive terror of the utterly alone.
    For a moment she saw nothing but the wastes of plain and mountain, forest and scrubland which lay outside this house. Then suddenly Max was smiling at her and saying, “Will you sit here—opposite me.”
    Incredibly, six words reached out to her in the isolation of her terror and loneliness, and, at their sound, the world took on its right proportions again and the chilling tremors left her.
    In the midst of the great vacuum she had visualized there was this little cell—this oasis—of friendliness and hope. By no planning of her own, she had been brought to it—and from here she would go out boldly to face whatever the future might bring.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
    The following morning, almost before breakfast was over,