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an endless shower of raw gold. Celestial fireworks — could be the title of a Gershwin piece, eh?”
    “ You always liked me to play Gershwin,” she murmured, her thoughts winging back to Ridgley, to the piano in her aunt’s lounge and Ross lounging beside it in a smart, civilised suit of grey, listening while she played.
    A smile ran teasingly about his lips as he regarded her, then he tilted her chin. “You’ve gone through a baptism of fire and water,” he said. “You’ve witnessed God’s hand over the land.”
    “ You love all this wildness, don’t you, Ross?” she said.
    “ It’s got into my blood,” he admitted. “It’s made me what I am—a primitive.”
    S he laughed breathlessly. “You can be kind when you like,” she said, touching his arm with the tips of her fingers. “I thought for a small terrible time that you were hard all through.”
    “ Three-parts of the way through, honey.” He rose lazily to his feet, and she saw him run the backs of his fingernails down the jaw she had slapped. “You yourself can be a vixen in pink ribbons,” he drawled.
    “ Are you expecting an apology?” She spoke flippantly. “I couldn’t hurt you. Hitting you bruised my fingers.”
    “ That’ll teach you not to be so free with them,” he rejoined. “I don’t happen to like kittens who claw.”
    “ Don’t you ever think of me as a woman?” she found herself asking, curiously.
    “ If you could see yourself with my eyes.” He put back his head and laughed at her, and indeed she could well see how she must look at the moment, with tear streaks down her cheeks, her hair all mussed, and her lipstick smeared sideways where she had buried her head in the cushions of the lounger. Oh, let him laugh! Better laughing than biting out sarcasms and taunting her for being vulnerable enough to shrink from tropical lightning that could shear a tree to its heart.
    He liked violence. It was in the arrogance of his features, and in the hardness of his mouth. When he had plucked her off this lounger half an hour ago and made her go to the shutters, his fingers had gripped her so hard that her bones had felt as though they must snap within his grasp. She would have bruises tomorrow, if she didn’t have them already. Suddenly she felt washed out and rather sad. What had happened to the glib resolutions arrived at in England? Where now those hopeful resolutions of an unfledged imagination? Her brain was too weary to work it out . She let her head fall backward to rest on the cane back of the seat.
    He was pouring a drink with something less than his usual steadiness, swallowing it with unusual haste. The thunder was limping away into the distance.
    The remaining cases of household gear arrived a little later than expected owing to the heavy rains .. . and with them came a piano. Clare was dazzled by the sight of it when the boys and Ross had finally got it in and set it down, a bungalow model, an octave missing at each end. “Oh, Ross,” she had to blink to stop the foolish, pleased tears. “What a lovely surprise.”
    “I’m glad you’re pleased—thought you might be.” He ran his own clumsy fingers along the keyboard. “Maybe not quite so tuneful, as auntie’s grand.”
    “ It’s a little beauty!” She sat down on the matching bench and caressed the keys. “The nicest Christmas present I ever had.”
    “ Strange to think it’s the season of goodwill and holly, eh, out here where we’ve got a tropical sun blazing?” His hand squeezed her lightly clad shoulder. “You’ll be able to play carols, and I’ll polish up my voice and sing them.”
    A nd so it was. They had roast fowl and mock plum pudding for dinner, and brought in some greenery to give the living-room an air of festivity. Clare felt suspended on a wave of happiness. There was her baby piano, the gramophone, chintzes and silks, golf clubs and tennis rackets, books and seven-pound tins of sweet biscuits.
    T here was also the present she had