I tell you I am disgusted with this adventure
tomfoolery and rot. I don't like it. Tudor is a sample of the adventure-
kind--picking a quarrel with me and behaving like a monkey, insisting on
fighting with me--'to the death,' he said. It was like a penny
dreadful."
She was biting her lip, and though her eyes were cool and level-looking
as ever, the tell-tale angry red was in her cheeks.
"Of course, if you don't want to marry me--"
"But I do," he hastily interposed.
"Oh, you do--"
"But don't you see, little girl, I want you to love me," he hurried on.
"Otherwise, it would be only half a marriage. I don't want you to marry
me simply because by so doing a stop is put to the beach gossip, nor do I
want you to marry me out of some foolish romantic notion. I shouldn't
want you . . . that way."
"Oh, in that case," she said with assumed deliberateness, and he could
have sworn to the roguish gleam, "in that case, since you are willing to
consider my offer, let me make a few remarks. In the first place, you
needn't sneer at adventure when you are living it yourself; and you were
certainly living it when I found you first, down with fever on a lonely
plantation with a couple of hundred wild cannibals thirsting for your
life. Then I came along--"
"And what with your arriving in a gale," he broke in, "fresh from the
wreck of the schooner, landing on the beach in a whale-boat full of
picturesque Tahitian sailors, and coming into the bungalow with a Baden-
Powell on your head, sea-boots on your feet, and a whacking big Colt's
dangling on your hip--why, I am only too ready to admit that you were the
quintessence of adventure.
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