'Good gracious! So they've appointed Sir Luke Tallant new Governor of Leichardt's Land!'

'Luke!—A coincidence you'll say. No good telling me that. SHE wrote that "Luke" was hankering after a colonial governorship.'

'Well, he's got it,' replied Mrs Gildea noncommittally.

'And if you read the leading article you'll see that the CHRONICLE is justly outraged at so important a post as that of Governor of Leichardt's Land being given to an unknown man who has never served outside the Colonial Office in London and who doesn't even belong to the noble army of Peers.'

'That's all nonsense. Luke Tallant's a friend of Chamberlain's, a thorough Imperialist and a very good man for the post.'

'You know him then?'

'I know OF him.'

'From HER?'

'HER! Has it come to HER! Colin, if anyone had told me that you would ever be fool enough to fall in love with a woman you've never seen, I should have laughed outright. You don't even know what she's like.'

'I can see her in my mind's eye, as I used to see the women I read about by my camp fire. You'd never believe either what a queer idealistic chap I can be when I'm mooning about the Bush. Don't you know, Joan'—and his voice got suddenly grave and deep-toned—'you ought to, for you were a bush girl and you've had men-kind out in the Back Blocks—Don't you know that when a man has got to go on day after day, week after week, year after year, fighting devils of loneliness and worse—with nothing to look at except miles and miles of stark staring gum trees and black, smelling GIDGEE* and dead-finish scrub—and never the glimpse of a woman—not counting black gins—to remind him he once had a mother and might have a wife. Well, can't you see that his only chance of not growing into a rotten HATTER* is to start picturing in his imagination all the beautiful things he's ever seen or read about—the sort of lady-wife he hopes to have some day and in making such a companion of her that she seems to him as real as the stars and far more real than the gum trees. So as he'll keep saying to her always in his thoughts: "I'll keep myself sound and wholesome for your sake. I'll never forget that I'm a gentleman, so as YOU won't shrink away from me in horror if ever I've the luck to come across YOU down here on this Earth."'