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She half turned in her seat.

“Bret!”

He leaned forward:

“Yes?”

“Did you ever know what your father paid for the house at Coolami?”

“No. Must have been a good deal. The stone came from Kalula. You remember it being built, I suppose?”

She laughed a little.

“I was going to tell you what your mother said to your father one day when I was over there. She was a very definite person, Bret, wasn't she?”

“Yes.”

“She said, ‘George, there are houses that look like architect's advertisements and there are houses that look like acts of God. In this landscape every house should look like an act of God. Anything else is a crime.'”

Bret thought a minute, smiling. Millicent supposed, watching his face, that he was trying to imagine his mother and herself as quite young women, standing on the verandah of a Coolami he had never known. He said at last:

“I suppose that's what it does look like.”

“It might have grown there,” she answered.

Drew, driving idly, basking with a new enjoyment in the sun, watching the bush with one eye and listening with one ear to Millicent, felt a little shock, a sharp and bitter pain. It made him angry. His brows drew together and his fingers tightened and his right foot went down, down—

The road became a grey streak again and his mind a confused whirl of thoughts, of protests, of accusations and defences—

Acts of God, eh? Architects' advertisements? Well, that was a dig at Ballool, sure enough. No, it wasn't, either; Millicent didn't give one left-handed digs like that. But there it was – he knew now what she thought of the house he'd built for her. And he wondered vaguely how he knew also so suddenly and certainly that she was right; that it
was
like an architect's advertisement—

It had, he felt sure, swinging round the well-dished curves, some obscure connection with other discoveries he'd made that morning – a moment of perception, flashed and gone, when he'd noticed the peach tree; other moments more lingering and queerly pleasant when he'd been seeing, for the first time, his native bushland; some half-formed understanding as the pink, flowerless shrub faded behind him, of beauty as something not necessarily obvious. Of beauty as a fugitive, fragile, ephemeral, incredibly elusive. Not even real, sometimes; an illusion – an emotion, perhaps – a mood—

Fanciful, fanciful—

And there before him was that other fanciful thing –
that silver bit of nonsense and absurd expense! He was troubled. Disturbed by a new glimpse of some other Tom Drew than the successful hearty chap he knew so well and so sincerely respected.

“Act of God!” Stone, eh? Probably like a prison. Well, if that was what Milly liked, what she wanted—

But it wasn't. It couldn't be. Thirty-seven years it had taken him to make his money, and not even Milly knew quite how much of it he'd made. So that the house at Ballool which was, after all, the culminating outward and visible sign of his victory,
must
be perfect.

Mustn't it—?

Because if not—

It was possible, of course, that he should have allowed her more say in the building of it. But that – it would have been – it wouldn't have had—

He wrestled with his thought, which was that he hadn't wanted his gesture spoilt. His final, magnificent gesture.
To take her by the hand and show it to her – a thing accomplished, perfect in its every detail, the last, the
very
last word in comfort, efficiency.
Now
are you glad you eloped with me?
Now
are you proud?
Now
do you see that there's other enterprise than country enterprise, other endeavour, other achievement—

And he
had
let her furnish it herself.

“Architect's ad—”

He took a corner so sharply that Susan called out gaily from the back, “Are you feeling suicidal, Daddy?” Because he'd suddenly remembered that Travers, coming for a final inspection with him, had actually said complacently, “Quite my best, Mr. Drew. I'm proud of it. It's a credit to us both!”

Oh, blast the house! Blast all houses! The road swung round and a signboard leapt out before them, vastly lettered:

“
BULLABURRA
.”

“Hell!”
though Drew furiously, roaring past it, “Jabber-jabber, confounded gibberish—!”

Millicent glanced sideways, cautiously, at his crimson face.

B
RET
looked at his watch and Susan asked him idly:

“What's the time?”

“Eight o'clock.”

“Heavens! Only just breakfast time!”

“Hungry?”

“No. But I'd like a smoke.”

“I've been wanting one ever since we started.”

She called:

“Daddy!” and her father answered with a grunt and a movement of his head.

“We're both suffering for a cigarette. What about a halt?”

He said crossly:

“You smoke too much.” And then he asked Milly. “Where do you want to have breakfast?”

She thought for a moment. She was feeling rather miserable. It was inevitable that sooner or later out of that phrase remembered from so long ago should arise a picture of the house it so justly described. “Fool! Fool!” she cried angrily at herself, staggered and humbled that she could for even a second be so forgetful, so hideously and cruelly tactless—

How strong was it – that satisfaction of Tom's? That conviction of a triumph of which his house was the symbol? Strong enough to shield him from the appalling and quite accidental justice of that stark description? She hoped feverishly that it was, and then,
confusedly, that it wasn't. For Tom, the Tom she loved, was not a man of dull perceptions and she could not wish him so; he was only a man obsessed and driven. She hadn't dared, yet, to admit even to herself how much she had hoped that now, with his goal achieved, his obsession satisfied, she might find another Tom whom she'd seen so far only in glimpses – rarely –

And now she had done, perhaps, irreparable harm. Something had made him angry, hurt. You don't live with a man for one year, let alone thirty-seven, without learning to read storm-signals on his face! It could only be that. Even now his mouth looked grim and his eyes gloomy. A dozen slick remarks in praise and admiration of his house flashed into her mind but she thrust them out hurriedly. She couldn't say things so blatantly insincere, nor was Tom the man to be mollified by them. He hadn't guessed before, she was very nearly sure, that she didn't share his admiration and his pride. It had been easy enough at first to take refuge in her gratitude, her love – these went deep, and she had used them without shame to cover a dismay and a dislike which would have come near to breaking his heart. Yes, it had been very easy, confronted with one perfection after another, to turn her back on a mingled despair and amusement fast mounting to hysteria, and to follow the more fundamental cry of her heart: “How
good
he is! How kind! How hard he has worked to get all this – for me!” Her kisses, her eager gratitude had not, she knew, lacked conviction then. It hadn't really mattered at all that what he thought was gratitude for the house was really gratitude for himself—

She said slowly

“Just anywhere where there's a view, dear.”

“Better go on a little farther then.”

Millicent put her right hand on his knee, and for a moment his left came down from the wheel to cover it. She said eagerly:

“I've never felt so much as though I were flying,” and took the little smile he gave her to her heart for comfort.

It did really, she thought, feel rather like flying, especially when, as now, you were swooping down a brief hill to climb the longer one opposite. A cemetery. Strange things, cemeteries; strange creatures, human beings, who made their ultimate terror as bleakly terrifying as they possibly could! How charming it would be if instead of white stones every grave had a tree – a flowering tree—

Her mind's eyes saw it – a wild profusion of spring blossom, a triumphant rebirth of vigour and beauty from bare winter branches. Odd that no religious sect had ever seized on that very simple and obvious allegory of resurrection—

Down again, under a railway bridge, up another hill. Houses were almost continuous, now, and away to the left, the world opened out suddenly into blue, magnificent distance.

Millicent said, staring:

“It's always lovelier than you expect it to be.” And Drew slowed down so that he could glance from time to time.

They slid into the town and stopped before closed railway gates. Over the roofs of half Katoomba they could still see that serene and luminous blue, bounded by a line of strange reddish-golden cliffs.

Millicent said to Bret, who had got out to stretch his legs and was standing beside her door:

“How queer they must look from the air, Bret. All the little mountain towns buried away in this – this vastness. I'd like to see it from the air.”

He nodded.

“But it's bad flying, you know. Air pockets and what not.”

Drew asked:

“Is this where you want to stop? Shall we go down to – what's their show place—? Echo Point, isn't it?”

“Well,” said Millicent reflectively. “I think we could find— Perhaps Bret—” and she called to her son-in-law who had gone over like a small boy to watch the train come roaring into the station: “Bret, could you guide us to a blue view without railings?”

He came back, considering.

“Without railings? Well—”

“Or seats,” Susan amended, “or notice boards.”

“I see. Strictly no modern improvements. Yes, I know the place. Just go on a little way through the town and there's a turn-off to the left. I'll show you.”

Susan said:

“How far is it? I'm hungry after all.”

And a man in shirt sleeves coming at his leisure to open the gates, heard her, and announced, grinning:

“Every one's 'ungry 'ere. It's the hair.”

Drew scowled a little, pressing his self-starter, but Millicent laughed. They bumped across the line and out on to the road again. The mountains were lost now, and they ran between railway and houses till Bret, with a: “This is where we turn off,” sent them lurching up a steep hill on to a red earth road shut in on either side by bush.

He directed, leaning forward to his father-in-law:

“Just go a bit slower here – we have to turn off again on to a sort of track – I don't want to miss it.”

Drew asked suspiciously:

“Track?”

“Yes, just a rough cart track. I think this is it – yes, there, on your right – see it?”

The Madison slowed ominously and stopped. Its owner stared at the track with surprise and disapproval.

“Do you expect me to take a car in there?”

Bret who had driven many cars where there was not even a track, suppressed a grin and said judicially:

“It's not bad you know, really. Just take it slowly and it won't hurt the springs.”

“It couldn't,” Susan asserted tactfully. “They're such marvellous springs. We haven't felt a bump all the way.”

Millicent intervened:

“No, Tom, not if you'd rather not. We could follow on to the end of this road. I can see blue through the trees. We'd find somewhere nice—”

But the Madison was snorting contempt, lumbering its great front wheels up the gutter on the side of the road, climbing disdainfully on to this contemptible highway whose like it had never yet beheld, setting off along it, lurching and swaying, while Bret and Susan ducked their heads from overhanging branches—

Millicent said with genuine admiration, clinging to the side of the door:

“It's really – surprising— It – doesn't jar one – at all.”

And Drew, manœuvring gingerly among water-washed chasms, thought proudly that the rocking was like the rocking of a cradle—

It came, Millicent thought, suddenly, but peacefully. There was something dream-like about it, and you came to it in rather the same way that you came to a dream. You found yourself in the midst of it with no clear conception of time either before or behind you. You felt only a sense of spiritual expansion, a rapturous absorbing of unbelievable colour, as a flower might open to take in draughts of sun.

“If,” thought Susan, “you'd been blind from birth, blue wouldn't mean anything to you. And then you'd get your sight and they'd point to the sky and say, ‘That's blue.'” And she felt, her eyes incredulously staring, that until this moment she'd been blind and now knew for the first time what blue was really—

Languorous, unfathomable, it drowned the valley in an other-worldly light of living colour. Yes, living, and that was strange because of its stillness, its faraway silence, its infinite and dreaming calm.

It hurt, she thought, feeling a sudden wave of misery and pain, it was nerve-racking, agonising; it had that quality of emotion which some music has – she couldn't look at it – couldn't bear to look at it—

She jumped out of the car and went quickly away towards the bush, her back to a loveliness that had become unendurable. She began to pick up sticks for the billy, seeing them blurred and distorted through a haze of sudden tears.

Bret watched her go. Drew and Millicent were still staring wordlessly down into the valley. He got out of the car, took the hamper and looked round for a spot to picnic. A doubt in his mind was beginning to worry him acutely. Yes, he'd been bluffing about the divorce. It had been simply one of the reckless things one says when one is half silly with anger, weariness, desperation. And he'd taken it for granted that when she had said, “What a pity – I was just being glad you'd saved me the trouble of asking for it myself,” she'd been bluffing too. Just letting off steam because she'd been miserable and was furious that he should have caught her crying. But now—