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Horses stood motionlessin the middle of the road, like ghosts, listening.
Freed
once, she wanted a new freedom, silvery and paradisicalin the atmosphere. The
crowd on the wharf gone tiny in the sun, and meltingaway as the ship turned.
Youd think to hear him he was nothingbut a tea-pot brewing metaphysical tea.
And here andthere the gold bushes of wattle with their narrow dark leaves.
You
wouldnt give in toKangaroo, and hes dead now. And now this blackness, thisslew
of water, this noise of hellish elements.
On the leftwas Manly, where Harriet
had lost her yellow scarf. A great grey bird, a crane, came downon wide soft
wings softly in the marshy place.
And here andthere the gold bushes of wattle
with their narrow dark leaves.
She never morepassionately identified herself
with it as at first.
Richard found he never wanted to talk to anybody,
neverwanted to be with anybody.
Richard thought of the snaky Praxiteles horses
outside theQuirinal in Rome.
These three days of dark wetness, slew, and wind
finished her.
And with it all, toiling on with civilisation. Harrietwould not
go down to the sea any more. Lovat watched till he could see the dark of the
mountain, far away,behind Coo-ee. Youll get the devils turning on you if you
try toomuch freedom. I wont go backon that, Jaz, though Kangaroo did say I was
the enemy of civilisation.
The disintegration of the social mankind back to
itselements.
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