Maggie was tiring of that question, but she supposed it was a reasonable one. She explained once again about the circus, her parents’ accident, and her subsequent time in England. “How do you happen to be here, Mr. Kirk?” she blurted out once the story had been told.

Caught off guard, Mr. Kirk stared at Maggie for a moment and then laughed aloud. “You are refreshingly forthright, Miss Chamberlin. I came to Australia in the sixties with my father. He’d been, well—disillusioned, you might say—by the War Between the States. He bought mining shares, planning to strike gold. Instead, he found one of the largest opal deposits in the world.”

“Your story is certainly more spectacular than my own,” Maggie observed guilelessly.

Once again Mr. Kirk gave that disturbing, mellowed-brandy laugh. “I wonder,” he said cryptically when he’d recovered. Then, like quicksilver, the conversation changed course. “Have you any references, Miss Chamberlin?”

Maggie’s hopes of finding a place for herself began to fade. “No, sir—only those that were required for emigration to this country. I—I’ve never worked as a governess—”

Mr. Kirk looked alarmingly dour, the ruler propped under his square, clean-shaven chin. “I see. If you weren’t a governess, Miss Chamberlin, what were you?”

Maggie gulped, aware of the prejudice some people sustained against performers of any kind. “I was an actress, of sorts.”

There was a lengthy silence, during which Maggie could read absolutely nothing from Mr. Kirk’s expression, and then he asked, “Do you hope to return to that—profession?”

“No,” Maggie lied. She didn’t like misleading Mr. Kirk, but the plain fact was that her very survival could depend upon it. “I’m very well educated, sir—I can read and write and cipher as well as anyone—”

“Please stop calling me sir,” Mr. Kirk interrupted, somewhat brusquely. “I despise it.”

Maggie flushed and looked down at her clenched hands. She couldn’t seem to get anything right this morning.

Suddenly Mr. Kirk moved from his chair and strode across the room to one of the bookshelves. From a row of exquisite leatherbound volumes, he took a book and brought it back to Maggie, fairly thrusting it into her hands.

“Read a passage aloud, if you will,” he barked, turning his back and clasping his hands behind him to listen, much like a schoolmaster hearing a lesson.

Maggie smiled to see that the book was an old friend: Plato’s Republic. She read a full page without a single hesitation and snapped the volume closed. During the reading she’d felt a rising sense of triumph; the tide of the interview had turned in her favor and she knew it.

“If you’d like the position, it’s yours,” Mr. Kirk said, now perched on the edge of his desk, his arms folded, and gazing pensively at Maggie as though she were a riddle that he couldn’t quite solve.