are too valuable for mere eating. They stowed them away in
the stern-locker till they landed. And those two heads are now in some
bush village back of Langa Langa."

She clapped her hands and her eyes sparkled. "They are really and truly
cannibals! And just think, this is the twentieth century! And I thought
romance and adventure were fossilized!"

He looked at her with mild amusement.

"What is the matter now?" she queried.

"Oh, nothing, only I don't fancy being eaten by a lot of filthy niggers
is the least bit romantic."

"No, of course not," she admitted. "But to be among them, controlling
them, directing them, two hundred of them, and to escape being eaten by
them--that, at least, if it isn't romantic, is certainly the quintessence
of adventure. And adventure and romance are allied, you know."

"By the same token, to go into a nigger's stomach should be the
quintessence of adventure," he retorted.

"I don't think you have any romance in you," she exclaimed. "You're just
dull and sombre and sordid like the business men at home. I don't know
why you're here at all. You should be at home placidly vegetating as a
banker's clerk or--or--"

"A shopkeeper's assistant, thank you."

"Yes, that--anything. What under the sun are you doing here on the edge
of things?"

"Earning my bread and butter, trying to get on in the world."

"'By the bitter road the younger son must tread, Ere he win to hearth and
saddle of his own,'" she quoted. "Why, if that isn't romantic, then
nothing is romantic. Think of all the younger sons out over the world,
on a myriad of adventures winning to those same hearths and saddles. And
here you are in the thick of it, doing it, and here am I in the thick of
it, doing it."

"I--I beg pardon," he drawled.

"Well, I'm a younger daughter, then," she amended; "and I have no hearth
nor saddle--I haven't anybody or anything--and I'm just as far on the
edge of things as you are."

"In your case, then, I'll admit there is a bit of romance," he confessed.

He could not help but think of the preceding nights, and of her sleeping
in the hammock on the veranda, under mosquito curtains, her bodyguard of
Tahitian sailors stretched out at the far corner of the veranda within
call. He had been too helpless to resist, but now he resolved she should
have his couch inside while he would take the hammock.

"You see, I had read and dreamed about romance all my life," she was
saying, "but