She laughed.  “The concentration of bloom in Northern hothouses deceives people.  The semi-tropics and the tropics are almost monotonously green except where cultivated gardens exist.  There are no masses of flowers anywhere; even the great brilliant blossoms make no show because they are widely scattered.  You notice them when you happen to come across them in the woods, they are so brilliant and so rare.”

“Are there no fruits—­those delectable fruits one reads about?”

“There are bitter wild oranges, sour guavas, eatable beach-grapes and papaws.  If you’re fond of wild cassava and can prepare it so it won’t poison you, you can make an eatable paste.  If you like oily cabbage, the top of any palmetto will furnish it.  But, my poor friend, there’s little here to tempt one’s appetite or satisfy one’s aesthetic hunger for flowers.  Our Northern meadows are far more gorgeous from June to October; and our wild fruits are far more delicious than what one finds growing wild in the tropics.”

“But bananas, cocoa-nuts, oranges—­”

“All cultivated!”

“Persimmons, mulberries—­”

“All cultivated when eatable.  Everything palatable in this country is cultivated.”

He laughed dejectedly, then, again insistent:  “But there are plenty of wild flowering trees!—­magnolia, poinciana, china-berry—­”

“All set out by mere man,” she smiled—­“except the magnolias and dog-wood.  No, Mr. Hamil, the riotous tropical bloom one reads about is confined to people’s gardens.  When you come upon jasmine or an orchid in the woods you notice the colour at once in the green monotony.  But think how many acres of blue and white and gold one passes in the North with scarcely a glance!  The South is beautiful too, in its way; but it is not that way.  Yet I care for it even more, perhaps, than I do for the North—­”

The calm, even tenor of the speech between them was reassuring her, although it was solving no problems which, deep in her breast, she knew lay latent, ready to quicken at any instant.

All that awaited to be solved; all that threatened between her and her heart and conscience, now lay within her, quiescent for the moment.  And it was from moment to moment now that she was living, blindly evading, resolutely putting off what must come after that relentless self-examination which was still before her.

The transport wagon was now in sight ahead; and Bulow, one of the guides, had released a brace of setters, casting them out among the open pines.

Away raced the belled dogs, jingling into the saw-scrub; and Shiela nodded to him to prepare for a shot as she drew her own gun from its boot and loaded, eyes still following the distant dogs.

To and fro raced the setters, tails low, noses up, wheeling, checking, quartering, cutting up acres and acres—­a stirring sight!—­and more stirring still when the blue-ticked dog, catching the body-scent, slowed down, flag whipping madly, and began to crawl into the wind.