gs for him alone; she treated him, as she did all the
others, to perfect candour.

After dinner they had music in the drawing-room. The piano was
grotesquely out of tune, but what cared they for that? She touched it
and their souls were drawn out of their bodies. Probably the performer
suffered, but she played on with a smile. They listened entranced until
darkness fell, and when it is dark at Enterprise in June it is high time
to go to bed.

They all accompanied Stonor to the door. The long-drawn summer dusk of
the North is an ever fresh wonder to newcomers. At sight of the
exquisite half-light and the stars an exclamation of pleasure broke from
Clare.

"Much too fine a night to go to bed!" she cried. "Sergeant Stonor, take
me out to the bench beside the flagstaff for a few minutes."

As they sat down she said: "Don't you want to smoke?"

"Don't feel the need of it," he said. His voice was husky with feeling.
Would a man want to smoke in Paradise?

By glancing down and sideways he could take her in as far up as her neck
without appearing to stare rudely. She was sitting with her feet crossed
and her hands in her lap like a well-bred little girl. When he dared
glance at her eyes he saw that there was no consciousness of him there.
They were regarding something very far away. In the dusk the wistfulness
which hid behind a smile in daylight looked forth fully and broodingly.

Yet when she spoke the matter was ordinary enough. "All the men here
tell me about the mysterious stranger who lives on the Swan River. They
can't keep away from the subject. And the funny part of it is, they all
seem to be angry at him. Yet they know nothing of him. Why is that?"

"It means nothing," said Stonor, smiling. "You see, all the men pride
themselves on knowing every little thing that happens in the country.
It's all they have to talk about. In a way the whole country is like a
village. Well, it's only because this man has succeeded in defying their
curiosity that they're sore. It's a joke!"

"They tell me that you stand up for him," she said, with a peculiar
warmth in her voice.

"Oh, just to make the argument interesting," said Stonor lightly.

"Is that all?" she said, chilled.

"No, to tell the truth, I was attracted to the man from the first," he
said more honestly. "By what the Indians said about his healing the sick
and so on. And they said he was young. I have no friend of my own age up
here--I mean no real friend. So