It's like platonic
friendships and . . . and all such things; they are all right in theory,
but they won't work in practice. I 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.
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