"You don't?" she asked pointedly.
"No," I answered. "The dreadful part's for me."
I knew this was not true, or only partially true, but considered it justifiable after Tommy's warning—and Tommy knew a lot about women. I remembered him saying once that a girl's determination could be changed in two ways: by opposition, and by coöperation. I had tried opposition, so now I would pretend to fall resignedly in with Monsieur's plan, taking it for granted that her future promised nothing but idyllic happiness, that memories would pass, and all that kind of thing. I would become an enigma to her—for this, also, had been one of Tommy's diverse methods of success. Some day, confessing how my triumph had been achieved, we both would laugh over it, and then she would have to admit that Tommy was not the only one who knew a thing or two about women.
So reasoning, I started in at once. For a while she stared at me, her eyes growing wider and wider. Then she arose and went to the rail, remarking coolly:
"Please signal to have Echochee and Monsieur Dragot brought out at once." And that was the only thing she would say.
To hell with what Tommy knew about women! She would not so much as look at me again, and when that wretched old rag of a shriveled-up squaw, incarnate fiend of a watchful guardian, arrived my princess retired to her stateroom, nor did she appear again the entire day. What Tommy knew about women, indeed!
The rest of us lunched in moody silence, except Monsieur who grew loquacious to the point of making himself an ass. He was not on the crest of popularity, anyway. Previously, in order to give Doloria more freedom, Tommy and I decided to sleep on deck and use Gates's quarters for a dressing room. But when this proposition was also opened to the professor he flatly refused to join with us. The truth of the matter was that he had determined upon a plan—singularly popular among pedagogues—of watchful waiting; he had made up his mind that Doloria and I should not see each other again except in his presence. He may have told her this—I rather suspected it.
As we sat in the cockpit smoking, he became down-right obnoxious by excessive jocularity. It can be disgustingly overdone. Believing that his triumph was assured, he sputtered and giggled with small regard for my presence, and the farther he went the madder I got. Despite his former protestations of fair play, I now began to nurse a suspicion of this befousled little gimcrack; but I'd not thought that Tommy would grow a distemper of any magnitude until the professor, rubbing his hands, announced:
"Mon Capitaine says we do not sail for an hour. Let us take a small boat and fish around the mangroves! Maybe a snapper, eh?—or a sheep's-head!"
I was silent. Tommy puffed indifferently at his pipe.