Lalaperu there, or any black boy. Then I could give him
orders, and keep him penned away from me; and men like you would leave me
alone, and not talk marriage and 'I want, I want.'"

Sheldon laughed in spite of himself, and far from any genuine impulse to
laugh.

"You are positively soulless," he said savagely.

"Because I've a soul that doesn't yearn for a man for master?" she took
up the gage. "Very well, then. I am soulless, and what are you going to
do about it?"

"I am going to ask you why you look like a woman? Why have you the form
of a woman? the lips of a woman? the wonderful hair of a woman? And I am
going to answer: because you are a woman--though the woman in you is
asleep--and that some day the woman will wake up."

"Heaven forbid!" she cried, in such sudden and genuine dismay as to make
him laugh, and to bring a smile to her own lips against herself.

"I've got some more to say to you," Sheldon pursued. "I did try to
protect you from every other man in the Solomons, and from yourself as
well. As for me, I didn't dream that danger lay in that quarter. So I
failed to protect you from myself. I failed to protect you at all. You
went your own wilful way, just as though I didn't exist--wrecking
schooners, recruiting on Malaita, and sailing schooners; one lone,
unprotected girl in the company of some of the worst scoundrels in the
Solomons. Fowler! and Brahms! and Curtis! And such is the perverseness
of human nature--I am frank, you see--I love you for that too. I love
you for all of you, just as you are."

She made a _moue_ of distaste and raised a hand protestingly.

"Don't," he said. "You have no right to recoil from the mention of my
love for you. Remember this is a man-talk. From the point of view of
the talk, you are a man. The woman in you is only incidental,
accidental, and irrelevant. You've got to listen to the bald statement
of fact, strange though it is, that I love you."

"And now I won't bother you any more about love. We'll go on the same as
before. You are better off and safer on Berande, in spite of the fact
that I love you, than anywhere else in the Solomons. But I want you, as
a final item of man-talk, to remember, from time to time, that I love
you, and that it will be the dearest day of my life when you consent to
marry me. I want you to think of it sometimes. You can't help but think
of it sometimes. And now we won't talk about it any more. As between
men