Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/137

 delighted too! You appreciate! You have a soul for it! I am indeed glad that we have met, even at the eleventh hour! May I light a cigarette and talk a little music for five minutes?"

"Do—please!" said Irralie, with perfectly sincere enthusiasm.

"It is so refreshing to find anybody one can talk to up here! The piano, of course, was execrable, though not much worse than the thing you had to dance to; but it was in reasonably good tune, and one was glad to touch one again. I am going to send home for my Erard. Music one must have—especially in the desert—music and flowers. I mean to make this place one mass of geraniums! Geraniums and pansies and sweet-williams. I love those old crude flowers!"

He struck a match, and Irralie snatched a straw from the skirts of her cloak. She saw the rings blazing on his fingers as the tobacco caught and burnt. To her disappointment, however, instead of continuing the