That was a painfully flat day. Mrs. Crasterton had made arrangements exclusive of me, as for the past week I had been on my own hook. Edmée had gone to a garden party. I arranged my belongings ready for flight. Life seemed to have run aground. The Harbor was divine in the full day sun, brilliant blue but with a breath of haze like a veil, and little grey cow tracks all across it like sashes on the tides. The small waves whispered of the tides on the rocks covered with oyster shells and draped in seaweed with a grand sedgy odour. The gulls rocked about like paper boats at play. Out beyond the Heads the swelling Pacific towered high as a plain. Behind was the city so full of people, but nowhere in it had I found anyone to whom I could tell my perplexities with any hope of being understood or really helped. They would criticise and advise, but Ma and Great-aunt Jane had already furnished me with that kind of friendship and assistance.

I sat on the sea wall and looked down at the jetty at Pannikin Point. We always came home to Geebung Villa that way when we had no luggage needing a cab. Gaddy got off the ferry boat in company with a tall man. Gaddy added to the friction in my thoughts, so I stayed on the terrace with the camellias and watched the shipping. Presently he approached, calling me. When he appeared before me he flung out a leg and waltzed, an indulgence for aesthetic reasons improper to a corpulent man.

“Do you know who has put off his departure a whole day on purpose to see you—enough to give you swelled head, young woman. He heard about you on arrival, put in last night reading your book—guess who it is.”

“It couldn’t be Renfrew Haddington!”

“The very man! My idea of a real man and a literary josser combined—very rare, for I largely agree with old Wilting about local cacklers.”

Here was the really truly GREATEST AUSTRALIAN POET, but when a man had so many other distinctions it was easy to overlook this trifling indigenous dementia. He was known as one of the really influential journalists on the Australian press. He had represented the Melbourne Tribune in the Boer War. His despatches had been so sound that they had also been snapped up by London and American journals. His book on the war was considered a masterpiece alike by those who thought the war ignoble and by the swashbucklers. He had been lecturing in the United States and was on his way home.

Gad reminded me of all this, but I was not excited. I was subdued by campaign bruises. EXPERIENCE was teaching me that people sought me for their own entertainment, not for mine, and that those supposed to be interesting were frequently less so than those reported to be otherwise.

I had to return to the house with Gad, feeling insignificant and crest-fallen, but I did not care. This was my last night in Sydney. Pa and Ma had not been to Sydney for more than ten years, and as far as I could see it might be all that before I could come again.