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JAMES HARLEY dropped his pen, sighed heavily, placed his elbows upon the table, clasped his hands and gnawed his thumbnails as he gazed through the open window at the roof of the bungalow on the opposite side of the gully.

Heat-waves shimmered upon the red-painted roof, giving a semblance of dancing life to the background of pines in the park beyond. The high tecoma hedge which concealed the back of the bungalow was a black inviting shadow outlined in glittering silver where the sunlight struck its polished foliage. Cicadas chirred in the gully, setting up an atmospheric vibration which harmonised with the heat-waves upon the roof. There was no wind. There was only light—hot light flooding this green suburb of a New Zealand port.

It was a perfect February morning; but Harley could not appreciate its serenity in the turbulence of his thoughts. He was looking at the morrow when the little woman who was his wife should receive the letter he had just finished at his fifth attempt. He saw her standing motionless in a small hotel bedroom, letter in hand, gazing blankly at the wall with hopeless eyes while Jean, their daughter of four and a-half years, tugged at her skirts and imperiously demanded to know what had made her mother cry.

Harley stared at the shimmering roof for some minutes, then he threw out his hands in a gesture of despair.

“Why, in the name of God, did this have to happen to me?” he demanded in low tones.

He picked up the letter and read it again. He knew himself to be procrastinating. The letter had to be posted—it just had to be!—but it wasn’t going