And I
don't blame him."

"Her skipper's rotten bad with fever," Sheldon explained. "And he had to
drop his mate off to take hold of things at Ugi--that's where I lost
Oscar, my trader. And you know what sort of sailors the niggers are."

She nodded her head judicially, and while she seemed to debate a weighty
judgment he asked for a second helping of tinned beef--not because he was
hungry, but because he wanted to watch her slim, firm fingers, naked of
jewels and banded metals, while his eyes pleasured in the swell of the
forearm, appearing from under the sleeve and losing identity in the
smooth, round wrist undisfigured by the netted veins that come to youth
when youth is gone. The fingers were brown with tan and looked
exceedingly boyish. Then, and without effort, the concept came to him.
Yes, that was it. He had stumbled upon the clue to her tantalizing
personality. Her fingers, sunburned and boyish, told the story. No
wonder she had exasperated him so frequently. He had tried to treat with
her as a woman, when she was not a woman. She was a mere girl--and a
boyish girl at that--with sunburned fingers that delighted in doing what
boys' fingers did; with a body and muscles that liked swimming and
violent endeavour of all sorts; with a mind that was daring, but that
dared no farther than boys' adventures, and that delighted in rifles and
revolvers, Stetson hats, and a sexless _camaraderie_ with men.

Somehow, as he pondered and watched her, it seemed as if he sat in church
at home listening to the choir-boys chanting. She reminded him of those
boys, or their voices, rather. The same sexless quality was there. In
the body of her she was woman; in the mind of her she had not grown up.
She had not been exposed to ripening influences of that sort. She had
had no mother. Von, her father, native servants, and rough island life
had constituted her training. Horses and rifles had been her toys, camp
and trail her nursery. From what she had told him, her seminary days had
been an exile, devoted to study and to ceaseless longing for the wild
riding and swimming of Hawaii. A boy's training, and a boy's point of
view! That explained her chafe at petticoats, her revolt at what was
only decently conventional. Some day she would grow up, but as yet she
was only in the process.

Well, there was only one thing for him to do. He must meet her on her
own basis of boyhood, and not make the mistake of treating her