empty, that
everybody was down on the beach, out of sight, out of hearing. She had
the garden to herself; she was alone.

Dazzling white the picotees shone; the golden-eyed marigold glittered;
the nasturtiums wreathed the veranda poles in green and gold flame. If
only one had time to look at these flowers long enough, time to get over
the sense of novelty and strangeness, time to know them! But as soon as
one paused to part the petals, to discover the under-side of the leaf,
along came Life and one was swept away. And, lying in her cane chair,
Linda felt so light; she felt like a leaf. Along came Life like a wind
and she was seized and shaken; she had to go. Oh dear, would it always
be so? Was there no escape?

... Now she sat on the veranda of their Tasmanian home, leaning against
her father's knee. And he promised, "As soon as you and I are old
enough, Linny, we'll cut off somewhere, we'll escape. Two boys together.
I have a fancy I'd like to sail up a river in China." Linda saw that
river, very wide, covered with little rafts and boats. She saw the
yellow hats of the boatmen and she heard their high, thin voices as they
called...

"Yes, papa."

But just then a very broad young man with bright ginger hair walked
slowly past their house, and slowly, solemnly even, uncovered. Linda's
father pulled her ear teasingly, in the way he had.

"Linny's beau," he whispered.

"Oh, papa, fancy being married to Stanley Burnell!"

Well, she was married to him. And what was more she loved him. Not
the Stanley whom every one saw, not the everyday one; but a timid,
sensitive, innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his
prayers, and who longed to be good. Stanley was simple. If he believed
in people--as he believed in her, for instance--it was with his whole
heart. He could not be disloyal; he could not tell a lie. And how
terribly he suffered if he thought any one--she--was not being dead
straight, dead sincere with him! "This is too subtle for me!" He flung
out the words, but his open, quivering, distraught look was like the
look of a trapped beast.

But the trouble was--here Linda felt almost inclined to laugh, though
Heaven knows it was no laughing matter--she saw her Stanley so seldom.
There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the rest
of the time it was like living in a house that couldn't be cured of the
habit of catching on fire, on a ship that got wrecked every day. And it
was always