"I do, I do," I protested. "Can't you see it?"
"I can't see anything," she said stubbornly, "except that you'd do this rather than listen to me. It shows all you think of me. Oh, I hate you! I never, never want to see you again!"
"Is that your last word?" I demanded.
"Absolutely my last," she answered firmly.
"Well," I said, "here's my last too. I'm going to carry out my promise, and if a man had spoken to me about it as you have spoken to me to-night I would have pulped his face."
"I really believe you would," she said exasperatingly. "You see, Jim, you were always something of a savage. That, I suppose, is why you are so anxious to go to the Islands ... where the savages are."
That was the very last word she had said to me, for the next moment the gate was banged behind her and shut me out of her life. I was hurt, badly hurt in my self-esteem, but my rising anger, burning hot within me, kept me from feeling as bad as I might have felt. In two months' time I landed at Tulagi on Florida Island, and for the next four years or so the civilised world knew me not. I reached finality, but I spent my fortune and came back to Australia to all intents and purposes a pauper. Four years...! Here she was facing me at last—just as if nothing had ever come between us.
"Yes, it's me," I said ungrammatically. "Why?"
She raised her hand to her throat with a queer little gesture. "I didn't quite expect to see you ... yet," she said.
"It's the unexpected that happens," I remarked. "I've come back at last, though in slightly different circumstances."