Chapter 13 - Page 2

used to
believe in such things once. That is why I am here in the Solomons
at present."

Joan was impatient. He saw that she could not understand. Life
was too clearly simple to her. It was only the youth who was
arguing with him, the youth with youth's pure-minded and invincible
reasoning. Hers was only the boy's soul in a woman's body. He
looked at her flushed, eager face, at the great ropes of hair
coiled on the small head, at the rounded lines of the figure
showing plainly through the home-made gown, and at the eyes--boy's
eyes, under cool, level brows--and he wondered why a being that was
so much beautiful woman should be no woman at all. Why in the
deuce was she not carroty-haired, or cross-eyed, or hare-lipped?

"Suppose we do become partners on Berande," he said, at the same
time experiencing a feeling of fright at the prospect that was
tangled with a contradictory feeling of charm, "either I'll fall in
love with you, or you with me. Propinquity is dangerous, you know.
In fact, it is propinquity that usually gives the facer to the
logic of youth."

"If you think I came to the Solomons to get married--" she began
wrathfully. "Well, there are better men in Hawaii, that's all.
Really, you know, the way you harp on that one string would lead an
unprejudiced listener to conclude that you are prurient-minded--"

She stopped, appalled. His face had gone red and white with such
abruptness as to startle her. He was patently very angry. She
sipped the last of her coffee, and arose, saying, -

"I'll wait until you are in a better temper before taking up the
discussion again. That is what's the matter with you. You get
angry too easily. Will you come swimming? The tide is just
right."

"If she were a man I'd bundle her off the plantation root and crop,
whale-boat, Tahitian sailors, sovereigns, and all," he muttered to
himself after she had left the room.

But that was the trouble. She was not a man, and where would she
go, and what would happen to her?

He got to his feet, lighted a cigarette, and her Stetson hat,
hanging on the wall over her revolver-belt, caught his eye. That
was the devil of it, too. He did not want her to go. After all,
she had not grown up yet. That was why her logic hurt. It was
only the logic of youth, but it could hurt damnably at times. At
any rate, he would resolve upon one thing: never again would he
lose his temper with her. She was a child; he must remember that.
He sighed heavily. But why in reasonableness had such a child been
incorporated in such a woman's form?

And as he continued to stare at her hat and think, the hurt he had
received passed away, and he found himself cudgelling his brains
for some way out