l
Wife perfectly. Go on, Colin. Five foot seven and a good ten stone. How
is the rest of HER? Fair or dark--her hair now--and her eyes?'

'Her hair--oh, it isn't fair--not yellow or noticeable in colour--like
those dyed beauties you see about. Her hair is dark, soft and cloudy
looking. And she's got a small head set like--like a lily on its
stem--and her hair is parted in the middle and coiled smoothly each
side and into a sort of Greek knot....'

'In short, she's a cross between the Venus of Milo and the Madonna.'

Mrs Gildea was smiling amusedly.

'Perhaps.... Something of that sort. Dignity and sweetness, you
know--those are what I admire in a woman. But not too much of the
goddess or of the angel either. I shouldn't want always to have to load
up with a pedestal when we shifted camp, and the only shrine I'd keep
going for her would be in my heart. It's a Mate I'm wanting, as well as
an Ideal.... Now you're laughing again.'

'No, I'm not. I agree with you entirely--and so would SHE.'

'There! You needn't tell me. I shouldn't wonder if I'd got the second
sight where SHE'S concerned.'

Again Mrs Gildea smiled enigmatically.

'I shouldn't wonder, Colin. But you haven't finished your personal
description. What about the colour of her eyes?'

'Now I don't believe I could say exactly the colour of her eyes any
more than of her hair. They're the kind, to me, that have no colour.
Soft and melting and sort of mysterious--Deep and clear and with a
light far down in them like starlight reflected in a still lagoon.... I
say, Joan, you remember the old Eight Mile Water-hole on Dingo
Flat--middle of the patch of flooded gum and she-oak--that the Blacks
used to say had no bottom to it? HER eyes seemed to me a bit like that
water-hole--No bottom to her possibilities.'

'That's true enough,' assented Mrs Gildea. 'There's no bottom to HER
possibilities.'

'I could tell it from her letter. She seemed to write flippantly about
things--but that was just because she hates insincerity and flummery,
and the world she lives in doesn't satisfy her. Why, it was as if I
read slick through to her soul. That woman would go through anything
for a man she really loved.'

He had a way of lowering his voice when he spoke of love--as if he felt
it a sacred subject; and this in him surprised Joan. She was
discovering a new Colin McKeith. She answered softly.

'Yes. I think she would--IF she really loved him.'

'What I haven't been abl