Mrs Fairfield disappeared, and Linda lay in a rocking-chair, her arms above her head, rocking to and fro.

“You don’t want the light — do you, Linda?” said Beryl. She moved the tall lamp so that she sat under its soft light.

How remote they looked, those two, from where Linda sat and rocked. The green table, the polished cards, Stanley’s big hands and Beryl’s tiny ones, all seemed to be part of one mysterious movement. Stanley himself, big and solid, in his dark suit, took his ease, and Beryl tossed her bright head and pouted. Round her throat she wore an unfamiliar velvet ribbon. It changed her, somehow — altered the shape of her face — but it was charming, Linda decided. The room smelled of lilies; there were two big jars of arums in the fireplace.

“Fifteen two — fifteen four — and a pair is six and a run of three is nine,” said Stanley, so deliberately, he might have been counting sheep.

“I’ve nothing but two pairs,” said Beryl, exaggerating her woe because she knew how he loved winning.

The cribbage pegs were like two little people going up the road together, turning round the sharp corner, and coming down the road again. They were pursuing each other. They did not so much want to get ahead as to keep near enough to talk — to keep near, perhaps that was all.

But no, there was always one who was impatient and hopped away as the other came up, and would not listen. Perhaps the white peg was frightened of the red one, or perhaps he was cruel and would not give the red one a chance to speak….

In the front of her dress Beryl wore a bunch of pansies, and once when the little pegs were side by side, she bent over and the pansies dropped out and covered them.

“What a shame,” said she, picking up the pansies. “Just as they had a chance to fly into each other’s arms.”

“Farewell, my girl,” laughed Stanley, and away the red peg hopped.

The drawing-room was long and narrow with glass doors that gave on to the verandah. It had a cream paper with a pattern of gilt roses, and the furniture, which had belonged to old Mrs Fairfield, was dark and plain. A little piano stood against the wall with yellow pleated silk let into the carved front. Above it hung an oil painting by Beryl of a large cluster of surprised-looking clematis. Each flower was the size of a small saucer, with a centre like an astonished eye fringed in black. But the room was not finished yet. Stanley had set his heart on a Chesterfield and two decent chairs. Linda liked it best as it was….

Two big moths flew in through the window and round and round the circle of lamplight.

“Fly away before it is too late. Fly out again.”

Round and round they flew; they seemed to bring the silence and the moonlight in with them on their silent wings….

“I’ve two kings,” said Stanley. “Any good?”

“Quite good,” said Beryl.

Linda stopped rocking and got up. Stanley looked across. “Anything the matter, darling?”

“No, nothing. I’m going to find mother.”

She went out of the room and standing at the foot of the stairs she called, but her mother’s voice answered her from the verandah.

The moon that Lottie and Kezia had seen from the storeman’s wagon was full, and the house, the garden, the old woman and Linda — all were bathed in dazzling light.

“I have been looking at the aloe,” said Mrs Fairfield. “I believe it is going to flower this year. Look at the top there. Are those buds, or is it only an effect of the light?”

As they stood on the steps, the high grassy bank on which the aloe rested rose up like a wave, and the aloe seemed to ride upon it like a ship with the oars lifted. Bright moonlight hung upon the lifted oars like water, and on the green wave glittered the dew.

“Do you feel it, too,” said Linda, and she spoke to her mother with the special voice that women use at night to each other as though they spoke in their sleep or from some hollow cave — “Don’t you feel that it is coming towards us?”

She dreamed that she was caught up out of the cold water into the ship with the lifted oars and the budding mast. Now the oars fell striking quickly, quickly. They rowed far away over the top of the garden trees, the paddocks and the dark bush beyond. Ah, she heard herself cry: “Faster! Faster!” to those who were rowing.

How much more real this dream was than that they should go back to the house where the sleeping children lay and where Stanley and Beryl played cribbage.

“I believe those are buds,” said she.