“I see what you mean,” she said after a pause. “It’s quite interesting. It even makes Borneo almost tolerable.”
“Well,” he qualified, “of course I don’t necessarily mean Borneo in particular.”
“I understand. Why do you go back, then?”
It was almost the very thing Lili had asked him when the proposition of his returning ignominiously from Honolulu held the boards. However, it was with by no means the old air of helplessness and groping that he put squarely up to Elsa the question: “What else can I do?” Openings in Borneo were not conspicuously numerous—that was certain.
She gazed at him intently. And then she murmured in even tones: “True, what else could you do?”
He looked off toward the harbour a little dreamily. “Perhaps,” he said, “something will turn up in Yokohama. We have nearly a week there, and I mean to pry around.”
“Yes, I would.” But somehow her look seemed not precisely to fit the words. And after a moment she asked him: “Is there anything you have in mind that you’d like to do?”
“Oh, no,” he replied with quite worldly carelessness. “Anything that would keep me busy and not let me drop back into a slump again.”
“You think there might be danger?” she calmly laughed.
“I don’t know,” he smiled. “I don’t want to try!” And then he asked her: “How much longer are you staying on, Miss Utterbourne?”