"Well, what's all the row about, after that?" inquired Fenton as before. "Haven't I said I accept your challenge? Go out there and fetch her, that's all. As for the rest—win her, if you can!"
"I don't say I'll try to win the girl. I may not like her for a cent."
"Then why all this futile argument and waste of valuable time?"
"But I may—confound your egotistic nerve, and your insistence! And I warn you, Fen, I mean every word, in case——"
"I understand—I understand you fully, without repetition," Fenton once more interrupted. "For Heaven's sake, give me your hand, old man, and cease firing."
"You meant it, then—no strings on the proposition?"
"Not a string—absolutely not a string."
A strange new thrill of pleasure crept into Grenville's being, warming his thin, anæmic pulses suddenly, as he met Fenton's gaze and once more permitted his thoughts to dwell on all the proposal embraced. Since Fenton refused to be worried concerning himself and the girl who supplied the motive for the trip, then why should he consider it further? Elaine was, in fact, swiftly fading from his reflections.
All his nature yearned towards the tropic seas. All his overwrought frame and substance ached for the long, lazy days of indolence, rest, and recuperation that alone could restore him to himself. He had always longed for precisely this excursion to the far-off edge of the sphere. His faculties leaped to the new-made possibility of a contact with the ancient world, heretofore so wholly inaccessible.
Already new color had come to his face and a new blaze of fire to his eyes. Privations and toil, those two unsparing allies that had made such inroads on his health and strength, seemed fading harmlessly away. The prospect was far too alluring to be resisted. There was no good reason in the world for refusing this favor to a friend.