“Not especially,” she replied with a restless toss of her head, yet without accentuating, as she so often did at such times, the drooping of her cow-brown eyes. “I find these places a bit dull, Captain,” she added, drawling. “I suppose it’s the effect of civilization.” Her dry thrust went home, and his eyes subtly twinkled. At such times he looked ever so human and guileless.
“Well,” capitulated Captain Utterbourne, his words lethargically purring, “I’m liable to be held up here some little time by fellows who are bringing down some tobacco from the interior. I didn’t know,” he suggested with icy, tempting hesitation, giving his daughter a playful yet challenging look, “but we might slip off together some day down toward Sarawak to see if we couldn’t capture a few ourangs, or perhaps a rhinoceros or two. Maybe you’d find that more exciting. I understand there’s still a little wild life left in the remoter realm of the raja.”
II
A day or so later Jerome, emerging from the office of a ships’ broker, met Elsa again. She was swinging along in her independent way, and he thought she had not even seen him, till abruptly she paused, her gaze just lighted, incidentally, by a smile of greeting.
“Have you found a ship yet?” she asked.
“Yes, there’s a sailing for Yokohama in a few days. We’re going on there and take a Pacific Mail boat back to San Francisco.”
“I suppose you’re anxious to start.”
“No, I’m not.”
“No?” Her blankness was disturbed by the merest flicker.
“Borneo’s out in the world, and San Francisco isn’t,” he explained, smiling a little, but obviously serious, too.