Chapter 1.VI.

In a steamer chair, under a manuka tree that grew in the middle of the
front grass patch, Linda Burnell dreamed the morning away. She did
nothing. She looked up at the dark, close, dry leaves of the manuka, at
the chinks of blue between, and now and again a tiny yellowish flower
dropped on her. Pretty--yes, if you held one of those flowers on the palm
of your hand and looked at it closely, it was an exquisite small thing.
Each pale yellow petal shone as if each was the careful work of a loving
hand. The tiny tongue in the centre gave it the shape of a bell. And when
you turned it over the outside was a deep bronze colour. But as soon as
they flowered, they fell and were scattered. You brushed them off your
frock as you talked; the horrid little things got caught in one's hair.
Why, then, flower at all? Who takes the trouble--or the joy--to make all
these things that are wasted, wasted...It was uncanny.

On the grass beside her, lying between two pillows, was the boy. Sound
asleep he lay, his head turned away from his mother. His fine dark hair
looked more like a shadow than like real hair, but his ear was a bright,
deep coral. Linda clasped her hands above her head and crossed her feet.
It was very pleasant to know that all these bungalows were empty, that
everybody was down on the beach, out of sight, out of hearing. She had the
garden to herself; she was alone.

Dazzling white the picotees shone; the golden-eyed marigold glittered; the
nasturtiums wreathed the veranda poles in green and gold flame. If only
one had time to look at these flowers long enough, time to get over the
sense of novelty and strangeness, time to know them! But as soon as one
paused to part the petals, to discover the under-side of the leaf, along