There seemed, too, something almost
hysterical in her make-up. Her temper was quick and stormy, and she
relied too much on herself and too little on him, which did not
approximate at all to his ideal of woman's conduct when a man was around.
Her assumption of equality with him was disconcerting, and at times he
half-consciously resented the impudence and bizarreness of her intrusion
upon him--rising out of the sea in a howling nor'wester, fresh from
poking her revolver under Ericson's nose, protected by her gang of huge
Polynesian sailors, and settling down in Berande like any shipwrecked
sailor. It was all on a par with her Baden-Powell and the long 38
Colt's.
At any rate, she did not look the part. And that was what he could not
forgive. Had she been short-haired, heavy-jawed, large-muscled, hard-
bitten, and utterly unlovely in every way, all would have been well.
Instead of which she was hopelessly and deliciously feminine. Her hair
worried him, it was so generously beautiful. And she was so slenderly
and prettily the woman--the girl, rather--that it cut him like a knife to
see her, with quick, comprehensive eyes and sharply imperative voice,
superintend the launching of the whale-boat through the surf. In
imagination he could see her roping a horse, and it always made him
shudder.
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