“Well, you’re only another poor mortal crying for the moon,” he said lightly.
“And don’t you ever cry for it?”
“Good Lord, my dear, sometimes it seems to me that I never do anything else. Come on, let’s go out to the fire, and smoke there.” As he spoke he took a sweater and a heavy coat off a hook, and collected tobacco, cigarettes and matches.
III
When they had piled up sticks and logs and started a fine blaze, they sat down in the sand and rushes a little way above it. He had wrapped his coat about her and had put on his own red sweater. The light of the flames played about their faces and lit up their eyes. They sat still for a while and then she turned to him.
“You were born in Sydney, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of a family did you have?”
“I didn’t have any except a father. That is, my mother died when I was born, and I was the first.”
“No relatives! How joyful!”
He turned with the flash in his eyes that she was trying to encourage.
“That’s the ironic part of it. Having none I always wanted some.”
“Tell me about it. What did you do as a boy?”
“Well, I think I had a funny childhood, very irregular, but it had its interesting side.” He picked up a piece of stick and threw it down into the fire, and talked on quietly and rather monotonously, quite without the reminiscencing fervour that Valerie had shown. “As a man my father was quite a character, but he was somewhat negligent as
