"You're right," I said grimly. "A few years more of this business and no woman would have you. You look hunted. Your hair is turning."
"Yes," he sighed, "I'm getting gray and old. Perhaps, as you once said, it is too much of a task for one man. I have tried every scientific appliance, but I have not stirred a single sense perception.
"And I am being interfered with. A local society for the prevention of cruelty to children is getting active. I am charged with inhumanity, and in danger of arrest at any time. Why, he could not live a week without the care I am giving him."
"Why not let the society have him? Get him off your mind. Do you expect your wife to be happy with that monstrosity between you? Give it up, Dartmoor."
"I cannot. It is my life's work."
"Then you'd better take him down to my island, where I am the law and the lawmaker. Otherwise your life will be short and your wife a young widow."
I had made the suggestion at haphazard, but he became interested at once, asked me all about my pearl fishery, and the gang of coolies who obeyed me as a king, and said he would think it over. I left him then; and believing that even as a rejected lover I had a right to see my old sweetheart once in ten years, I called upon her.
It is hard for a man roughened as I have become to describe that girl; so I shall not try, except to say that all sense of fair play left me, and that I had not been in her presence five minutes before I was down on my knees, begging to be taken back.
I almost gained my point. There were tears in her eyes, and her hand trembled as I held it. She admitted that Dartmoor's long neglect had lessened his value in her eyes, now that she had won him. But he had done nothing culpable; her promise was given, and he seemed fond of her, and in need of her.
"Confound Dartmoor and his need of you!" I growled. "I need you more. He has his man-baby and his science. You will be second. You would be first with me, Ella. Give him up—for me."