“You will come, dear one,” Tamea cooed.
“No, no,” he cried huskily. “Do not tempt me, Tamea.” And he moved a few feet. When he looked back she was standing where he had left her and her arms were outstretched to him. “No, I tell you,” he protested, and hurried away from her. So Tamea walked down the little path and sat down on the bench to await his return.
He returned to her. She knew he would.
“You are thinking, dear one, of what your friend Mellengair said to you about me,” she challenged. “You are thinking of the danger to a great white man to mate with a half-breed Kanaka.”
“Please,” he pleaded. “I wasn’t thinking of that at all.”
“Then you were wondering what Maisie would think—what she will say when you tell her how it is with us two.”
“I—I do not think I shall tell her—yet.”
Tamea’s breast heaved and her dark eyes flashed. “Then I will tell her, Dan. What have we to conceal? Maisie means nothing in my young life,” she added, tossing in a colloquialism she had picked up, the Lord knows where. “Why do you fear?”
“I do not fear.”
“I am glad to hear you say so. I should not love you if you were afraid of anything.”