caused my little world to rock and tremble, and then to fall in pieces
at my feet. I had loved her then--I thought I loved her more than
anything or anyone in this world--but a dying father's wish had come
between us. The poor old Dad had made a life study of the Islands--how
monumental a study it was let his three volumes of Solomon Island
Ethnology bear witness--yet he died before he had quite completed his
notes. Though he had said nothing to me I knew the wish that lay nearest
his heart, and I made his dying hour almost the happiest of his life by
promising to carry on his work.

I remember the night I came out to tell her. The sky was streaked with
dead gold and cerise and warm-tinted clouds trailed across the heavens
like the ends of a scarf streaming from the neck of a hurrying woman.
All the world was gay that evening and I whistled as I went. She was
waiting at the gate as always she had waited for me. She greeted me with
a smile and some bright little remark that I forgot practically the
instant it was uttered.

"I want to talk to you," I said; "I want to talk seriously."

She smiled up at me, a trusting little smile as I thought. She had no
idea what was coming, but she always gave me my head in the things that
do not matter much.

"What is it, Jim?" she asked.

"It's this," I said, and then I told what I had promised.

"But that," she protested, "means burying yourself in New Guinea and the
Solomons for four whole years."

"It does," I said. "There is no other way."

I had not been looking at her face--there had been no need, for I was
quite convinced that she would see things in a proper light--but now I
turned on her. To my surprise there was just the least little touch of
annoyance in her face.

"You don't quite relish the idea," I said.

"It's a very foolish idea," she said quite frankly. "I don't know what
you could have been thinking of."

"I was thinking of my father," I told her. "I was making his last hour
happy, and he died in the knowledge that I would carry his work on to
the conclusion he had planned."

"Are you going to see it through?" The abruptness of the question took
me aback.

"Of course," I said. "What else could I do?"

"Four years!" she said. "What is to become of me?"

"The time will soon go by," I answered, "and then I'll come back to you
and everything will be right."

"You seem to think of everyone but me," she said hotly. "You promised so
that your father wou