Mark laughed aloud. “My dear Priss,” he said, in the elder-brother manner he affected toward her. “My dear Priss, the South Sea Islands are no place for a white man, especially when he is alone. I’m glad to get back in the smell of oil, with an honest deck underfoot. And I don’t mind saying so.”
Priss shuddered, and wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, how I hate that smell,” she exclaimed. “But, Mark—tell me where you’ve been, and what you did, and—everything. Why won’t you tell?”
He wagged his head at her severely. “Children,” he said, “should be seen and not heard.”
She stamped her foot. “I’m not a child. I’m a woman.”
He bent toward her suddenly, his dark eyes so close to hers that she could see the flickering flame which played in them, and the twist of his smile. “I wonder!” he whispered. “Oh—I wonder if you are....”
She was frightened, deliciously....
Mark had persisted, all day long, in his refusal to tell her of himself. He had dropped a sentence now and then that brought to life in her imagination a strange, wild picture.... But always he set a bar upon his lips, caught back the words, refused to explain what it was he had meant to say. When she persisted, he laughed at her and told her he only did it to be mysterious. “Mystery is always interesting, you understand,” he explained. “And—I wish to be very interesting to you, Priss.”
She looked around the after deck for Joel; but he was below in the cabin, and she decided, abruptly, that she must go down....
They had bought chickens at Tubuai, and they had two of them, boiled, for supper that night in the cabin. It was a feast, after the long months of sober diet; and the presence of Mark made it something more. He was a good talker, and without revealing anything of the months of his disappearance, he nevertheless told them stories that held each one breathless with interest. But after supper, he went on deck with Finch, and Joel and Priss sat in the cabin astern for a while; and Joel wrote up, in the ship’s log, the story of his brother’s return. Priss read it over his shoulder, and afterwards she clung close to Joel. “He’s a terribly—overwhelming man, isn’t he?” she whispered.
Joel looked down at her, and smiled thoughtfully. “Aye, Mark’s a big man,” he agreed. “Big—in many ways. But—you’ll be used to him presently, Priss.”