She shook her head slowly, and more slowly, while I held tightly to her little hand. Then the doorbell rang, and we heard Dartmoor's voice.
"Curse him!" I cried hotly. "Ella, I won't have it. I won't give you up to him. I'm a man now, not a bewildered boy."
He came in before she could reply. He must have seen something out of the way in our faces, for he said jocularly:
"Talking about me, I'll wager. I wondered what made my ears burn. Do you know," he said, "that there is a scientific basis for that old fancy?"
As he took it scientifically and good-humoredly, I let it go; besides, as I remembered later, my anger had left me.
"Captain," he said seriously, "I have a proposition for you—that you take me and my phenomenon, with my attendants and apparatus, down to your island, where, I presume, we will be undisturbed. When I am alone with him I wish to try some experiments that I have long contemplated, but which have been interfered with by the people of this city. I will assume all expenses."
"Come along," I answered graciously. "I won't come within a mile of you, and the coolies will avoid you both."
"And, Ella," he said, turning to the girl he thought he loved, "it will necessitate a postponement of our wedding for a while. I cannot take you down into the South Pacific on an uncertainty. You will not mind, I know; we have waited long, and can wait a little longer. You agree with me, do you not, captain?"
"Of course, I do," I answered with a leaping heart, but trying to appear unconcerned. "It's no place for a woman."
She merely bowed her head and said nothing. What she thought I could not know. Nor can I remember much of what I thought myself. Mingled with my joy over the delay, there seemed to be vague imaginings of my holding Dartmoor by the heels over the taffrail and dropping him into the water. But I am not sure that these visions did not come later.