“You have been very nice to me today, Stoneface,” she admitted. “I think, perhaps, I may learn soon to forget that I dislike you. Do you insist upon going back to the city tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, I’m going back with Dan.”
“Please do not go,” she whispered, and squeezed his hand a little.
“Why? Why do you ask me to remain, child?”
“Because I shall be lonely here—and if you remain perhaps we may have a nice fight, no? I wish to talk to you—to understand some things. Please?”
She halted him, came close to him and looked up at him in a manner that could not be resisted. Mellenger felt a wild thrill in his heart and it must have registered in his eyes, for Tamea’s great orbs answered thrill for thrill.
“I’ll not stay,” he almost growled.
“Then walk with me a few minutes in the grounds,” she begged. “I must have some conversation with you—alone.”
They strolled out and down a graveled path through the trees to a bench Tamea had observed under one of them that day. They sat down. Tamea was first to speak.
“Stoneface, I have done much thinking because of what I heard you tell Dan the other night at his house. I know now how the friends of Dan Pritchard will regard me if he takes me to wife. They will not say, ‘Ah, there is that nice wife of his.’ No, they will say, ‘There is Dan Pritchard and his Kanaka wife.’ I shall always be one apart. You have made me very unhappy, Stoneface, but perhaps I should thank you for telling me first. Now I shall not go too far until I know how far I should go.”