below which a
bunch of yellowing bananas hung to ripen. In fact, the veranda and
garden beyond would have been paradise to a fruitarian. Against the
wall of the store-room, stood a large tin dish piled with melons,
pine-apples and miscellaneous garden produce, while, between the
veranda posts, could be seen a guava-tree, an elderly fig and a loquat
all in full bearing. The garden seemed a tangle of all manner of
vegetation--an oleander in bloom, a poinsettia, a yucca, lifting its
spike of waxen white blossoms, a narrow flower-border in which the
gardenias had become tall shrubs and the scented verbena shrubs almost
trees. As for the blend of perfume, it was dreamily intoxicating. Two
bamboos, guarding the side entrance gate, made a soft whispering that
heightened the dream-sense. The bottom of the garden looked an inchoate
mass of greenery topped by the upper boughs of tall straggling gum
trees, growing outside where the ground fell gradually to the river.

From where Mrs Gildea sat, she had a view of almost the whole reach of
the river where it circles Emu Point. For, as is known to all who know
Leichardt's Town, the river winds in two great loops girdling two low
points, so that, in striking a bee-line across the whole town, business
and residential, one must cross the river three times. Mrs Gildea could
see the plan of the main street in the Middle Point and the roofs of
shops and offices. The busy wharves of the Leichardt's Land Steam
Navigation Company--familiarly, the L.L.S.N. Co.--lay opposite on her
right, while leftward, across the water, she could trace, as far as the
grape-vine would allow, the boundary of the Botanical Gardens and get a
sight of the white stone and grey slate end of the big Parliamentary
Buildings.

The heat-haze over the town and the brilliant sun-sparkles on the river
suggested a cruel glare outside the shady veranda and over-grown old
garden.

A pleasant study, if a bit distracting from its plenitude of
associations to Australian-born Joan Gildea, who, on her marriage, had
been transplanted into English soil, as care-free as a rose cut from
the parent stem, and who now, after nearly twenty years, had returned
to the scene of her youth--a widow, a working journalist and shorn of
most of her early illusions.

Her typewriter stood on a bamboo table before her. A pile of Australian
Hansards for reference sat on a chair at convenient distance. A large
table with a green cloth, at her elb