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and shuffled uncomfortably on his feet. He could feel the blood rising again in his face.

“Mind if I come with you?” he managed at last.

Patricia touched his sleeve, and her voice was not entirely under control.

“We can’t stand here like fools, Jimmy. Let’s go where we can talk. Come along.”

Harley crossed the road by her side with eager alacrity, upright of carriage, confident, transformed; but this moment recognising the possibility that Patricia might have changed her mind about him, as she had reputedly changed it about many other men. If she had, he would soon prove to her that she erred.

“Feel the earthquake?” he asked conversationally, as they took the winding path across the river flats to the beach.

“Yes. Fairly severe one, wasn't it?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the West Coast has had another shaking up. Let us hope it isn’t a disaster like the last one. Can you imagine what a disaster that Murchison shake would have been had the district been thickly populated—if there had been cities for those hills to explode on instead of farms?”

“It is hardly likely that another shake will have occurred in the same district, surely?”

“Earthquakes obey no laws, apparently. They bob up whenever and wherever it suits them. Where were you when this one happened?”

“At Mrs. Langham’s, fitting her for an evening gown.”

“Good Lord! Just across the gully? Did you see me dashing for the high country?”

“No,” Patricia laughed. “Did you?” “I did. I take no chances with those things. I pictured the house sliding into the gully.”

“That’s what I thought might happen to the Langham’s place. Mrs. Langham and I dashed out into the road.”