to look for a
husband in a very different sort of position--I can see plainly that is
what Sir Luke thinks....'

'I don't care--a twopenny d-a-m-n--as you said--for what Sir Luke
thinks. I've got my own ideas as to the kind of husband most likely to
suit me.'

'There's the marvel of it. For you must have had dozens of men wanting
you. You are so beautiful.'

'Oh, Colin, I've told you what I feel about the English marriage
system. And, PAR PARENTHESE, I'm not beautiful. I don't come up in the
least to the artist's standard. My measurements are wrong. I'm too
small.'

'That's rot. There's a fascination about you no man can resist--or
woman either. I see it in the people who come here.'

'If I happen to have drawn them into what Rosamond used to call my
mysterious sphere of influence--which I seem to do without knowing it.
I'm not sure, though, that either Rosamond or Luke approve of my
drawing the Leichardt's Town people into my mysterious sphere of
influence.'

'I think, if you ask me, that Lady Tallant is a bit of a cat, and Sir
Luke more than a bit of a prig.'

'No. You mustn't say a word against them.' It was not in Bridget to be
disloyal. 'They've given me the time of my life.'

'When you smile like that, you remind me of a photograph of a picture
I've seen--a woman, I don't remember her name.'

'Mona Lisa--La Gioconda. I know--I've been told that before.'

'Yes, that's it. Mona Lisa. People have written about her.'

'Reams. Some day I'll read you what Pater says of her, unless you've
read him already--by your camp fire.'

For he had talked to her, as he had talked to Joan Gildea, about his
readings and his dreamings under the stars in the Bush.

'Eh! you shall teach me about these new writing chaps. I don't
understand your up-to-date theories. I've always gone in for plain
facts--standard reading--history--great thoughts of great minds--old
books brought out in people's editions. I'm up a tree--downright bushed
when you begin upon your queer ideas--all those new-fangled religions
and notions--Theosophy, spooks--about the earth being alive, and
thoughts making a sort of wireless telegraph system--I do believe in
that, though--to a certain extent. And your Brotherhood of Man! Bosh!
We're all like a lot of potatoes thrown into a sack and shaken about by
circumstance. And the big ones come to the top, and the little
ones--because they're little--sink to the bottom. I've always wanted to
be one of the