“You are a kind liar.” She kissed his hand humbly. “And now,” she added, with just a suspicion of a quaver in her voice, “it is your friend, Tamea, who is Stoneface—always to look out to sea for that which came—and went—and will never, never come again.”
Mellenger’s poker face twitched ever so slightly. “I am here to help you. Tell me how.”
“There can be no help, Mel. Dan is very unhappy with me. He loves me, but he is not happy with me, and it has come to the knowledge that never can the poor boy be happy with me. Great unhappiness is stronger than great love. It will kill love—and I have watched and his love is dying. I would have him leave me, loving me. If he remains he will grow mad, like that missionary Muggridge. Something in him that is fine and very like a little boy will wither and die.”
Mellenger nodded and Tamea continued: “To Dan also has been given the gift of seeing too clearly, understanding too readily, feeling too deeply.”
“Dan is my friend,” said Mellenger. “He has many virtues. He is lovable. But he is too much given to introspection. He thinks too much about himself and too little about others. He has not known great happiness and he has been eager to protect the little he has known. He has a restless soul, always poised for flight. In a word, he is utterly selfish and doesn’t know it. He would be highly insulted if he heard me say so, and he knows as much about women as a pig does about the binomial theorem.”
Tamea smiled wistfully. “Yes, he knows little of women. He is not observing, and, as you say, I think it is because he thinks overmuch about what each new day may bring him. I am to be the mother of his child, but he does not know this—and I have, for reasons of my own, not told him.”
“Ah!” Mellenger gasped. “That complicates matters. You are not married, I take it.”
“No, not the way you take it. You will not tell this to Dan, of course.”
“Of course I shall. If he is the father of your child he shall not evade the responsibility of fatherhood, although, to do him full justice, I do not think it would ever occur to him to evade it.”
“In his world, Mellengair, it is not quite au fait to be the father of a quarter-bred Polynesian child while still a bachelor.”