And again his glance travelled to the face of his hostess, with its bright, pleasant eyes and smiling mouth.
"And you live here with your children," he said, "here in this wilderness?
You leave England, you leave everything, for this ?" His hostess rose and took him over to the far side of the verandah.

The beginnings of a garden were spread out before them, with young fruit trees and flowering shrubs, and bushes of pale pink roses.

Exuberant tropical growths were interspersed with carefully tended vestiges of plants that had evidently been brought from a more temperate climate, and had not borne the transition well.

Bushes and trees and shrubs spread away for some distance, to where the ground rose in a small hillock and then fell away abruptly into bare hillside.
"In all this garden that you see," said the Englishwoman, "there is one tree that is sacred." "A tree ?" said the Frenchman.
"A tree that we could not grow in England." The Frenchman followed the direction of her eyes and saw a tall, bare pole at the summit of the hillock.

At the same moment the sun came over the hilltops in a deep, orange glow, and a new light stole like magic over the brown landscape.