It might have been a deal better if she HAD gone off with that man.
But to come now to the practical part of the situation.

You know enough about Australian ups and downs to realise that a cattle or sheep owner out West, may be potentially wealthy one season and on the fair road to beggary the next.

It will be different when times change and we take to sinking artesian bores on the same principle as when Joseph stored up grain in the fat years in Egypt against the lean ones that were coming.
That's what I meant to do and ought to have done at any cost.

But--well I just didn't.
The thing is that if I could have looked ahead, perhaps even six months, I might not have thought it acting on the square to a woman to get her to marry me.

If I could have looked a year ahead, I wouldn't have had any doubt on the subject.
But you see I justified it to myself.