I was my
natural self to you from the first. I told you my plans; and yet you sit
there and calmly tell me that you don't know whether I really intend to
become a planter, or whether it is all obstinacy and pretence. Now let
me assure you, for the last time, that I really and truly shall become a
planter, thanks to you, or in spite of you. Do you want me for a
partner?"
"But do you realize that I would be looked upon as the most foolish
jackanapes in the South Seas if I took a young girl like you in with me
here on Berande?" he asked.
"No; decidedly not. But there you are again, worrying about what idiots
and the generally evil-minded will think of you. I should have thought
you had learned self-reliance on Berande, instead of needing to lean upon
the moral support of every whisky-guzzling worthless South Sea vagabond."
He smiled, and said,--
"Yes, that is the worst of it. You are unanswerable. Yours is the logic
of youth, and no man can answer that. The facts of life can, but they
have no place in the logic of youth. Youth must try to live according to
its logic. That is the only way to learn better."
"There is no harm in trying?" she interjected.
"But there is. That is the very point. The facts always smash youth's
logic, and they usually smash youth's heart, too.
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