n later than the mining camp, but long before the great red
house. It seemed to her that she fitted here better than the Purdies.
She looked across at Kerr, sitting opposite, to see if perhaps he fitted
too. But he was foreign, decidedly. He kept about him still the hint of
delicate masquerade that she had noticed the night before. Out of doors,
alone with her, he had lost it. For a moment he had been absolutely off
his guard. And even now he was more off his guard than he had been last
night. She was surprised to see him so unstudied, so uncritical, so
humorously anecdotal. If she and the major, between them, had dragged
him into this against his will he did not show it. She rose from the
table with the feeling that in an hour all three of them had become
quite old friends of his, though without knowing anything further about
him.

"We must do this again," Mrs. Purdie said, as they parted from her in
the garden.

"Surely we will," Kerr answered her.

But Flora had the feeling that they never, never would. For him it had
been a chance touching on a strange shore.

But at least they were going away together. They would walk together as
far as the little car, whose terminal was the edge of the parade-ground.
But just outside of the gate he stopped.

"Do you especially like board walks?" he asked.

It was an instant before she took his meaning. Then she laughed. "No. I
like green paths."

He waved with his cane. "There is a path yonder, that goes over a
bridge, and beyond that a hill."

"And at the top of that another car," Flora reminded him.

"Ah well," he said, "there are flowers on the way, at least." He looked
at her whimsically. "There are three purple irises under the bridge. I
noticed them as I came down."

She was pleased that he had noticed that for himself--pleased, too, that
he had suggested the longer way.

The narrow path that they had chosen branched out upon the main path,
broad and yellow, which dipped downward into the hollow. From there came
the murmur of water. Green showed through the white grass of last
summer. The odor of wet evergreens was pungent in their nostrils. They
looked at the delicate fringed acacias, at the circle of hills showing
above the low tree-tops, at the cloudless sky; but always their eyes
returned to each other's faces, as if they found these the pleasantest
points of the landscape. Sauntering between plantations of young
eucalyptus, they came to the arched stone br