Jim was sitting on the foot of his bunk reading.  Mike had gone up the creek on a prospecting expedition.  Presently a magpie in a dead tree at a little distance burst into full-throated melody.  Done dropped his book to listen.  That clarion of jubilation always delighted him.  It seemed to him that if the young Australian republic men were talking of ever came into being its anthem must ring with the wild, free notes of its bravest singing-bird.

‘So the bold hayro was not kilt intoirely?’ Aurora was smiling in at him, her eyes full of sunshine, her cheeks suffused with more than their wonted colour.  ‘Are ye axin’ me in?  Thank ye, kind sir.’  She slipped into the tent, and, placing a hand upon each shoulder, examined him critically, while he smiled back into her face, and wondered why she brought with her suggestions of a bounteous rose-garden.  ’Ah, Jimmy, I thought I’d hardly know ye!

’"Where are your eyes that looked so mild? 
Hurroo!  Hurroo! 
Where are your eyes that looked so mild
Hurroo!  Hurroo! 
Where are your eyes that looked so mild,
When my poor heart you first beguiled?”

She sang no more, but sank upon his knee, and her arms were about his neck.  Her accent was mischievious, but there was the fire of rubies in her eyes.

‘They’re both there fast enough,’ laughed Jim.  ‘An’ niver a black one among them.  The big fellow didn’t spoil your picture, then?  Ah, Jim, it was fine! fine! fine!  It maddened me with delight to see you beating him.  You—­you sprig of a fighting devil, I love you for it!’

Jim’s heart took fire at hers.  He strained her to him, and his lips sank upon her handsome, eager mouth in a long kiss that transported him.

‘Dearest, you have kissed my heart,’ she whispered.  ’You fought him for the love of me, didn’t you?’

Only twice in his life had he kissed a woman, and as if greedy from long fasting he kissed her now, lips, cheeks, eyes, and neck.  His lips searched the deep corners of her mouth.

‘But you don’t say you love me, ma bouchal!’ Aurora murmured, and her arms tightened about his neck.

‘You are beautiful!  You are beautiful!’ he said fiercely.

‘But you don’t say you love me!’

‘I love you!  I love you!  I love you!’ There was not now in the young man’s mind any self-questioning; there was no probing for logical reasons, no doubting, no examining emotions in a suspicious, pessimistic spirit.  Done abandon himself to the delicious intoxication of the moment, and Aurora was transfigured under his caresses her aggressiveness, her bonhomie, her bold independence of spirit, were all gone; she developed a clinging and almost infantile tenderness, and breathed about him a cloud of ecstasy.

When Burton returned in two hours’ time, Done said nothing about Aurora’s visit, but Mike did not fail to mark his mate’s demeanour, which was unusually thoughtful.