ld die easy, and that's the end of it. If you are
going to be bound by such a thing as that you're nothing more than an
impractical idealist."

"I passed my word and a Carstairs never breaks a promise."

"You mean that, Jim? You mean that you are going away to ... carry out
that absurd promise?"

"It's not absurd," I declared.

"I think it is," she said wilfully. "If you go, you need never come
back."

"I am going," I said steadily. "As an honorable man there is no other
course open to me. I'm sorry that you look at it this way, but I can't
do anything else."

"At last I know how much you think of me," she said with that little
touch of anger with which a woman always defends the indefensible. "You
never did care for me."

"I do, I do," I protested. "Can't you see it?"

"I can't see anything," she said stubbornly, "except that you'd do this
rather than listen to me. It shows all you think of me. Oh, I hate you!
I never, never want to see you again!"

"Is that your last word?" I demanded.

"Absolutely my last," she answered firmly.

"Well," I said, "here's my last too. I'm going to carry out my promise,
and if a man had spoken to me about it as you have spoken to me to-night
I would have pulped his face."

"I really believe you would," she said exasperatingly. "You see, Jim,
you were always something of a savage. That, I suppose, is why you are
so anxious to go to the Islands ... where the savages are."

That was the very last word she had said to me, for the next moment the
gate was banged behind her and shut me out of her life. I was hurt,
badly hurt in my self-esteem, but my rising anger, burning hot within
me, kept me from feeling as bad as I might have felt. In two months'
time I landed at Tulagi on Florida Island, and for the next four years
or so the civilised world knew me not. I reached finality, but I spent
my fortune and came back to Australia to all intents and purposes a
pauper. Four years...! Here she was facing me at last--just as if
nothing had ever come between us.

"Yes, it's me," I said ungrammatically. "Why?"

She raised her hand to her throat with a queer little gesture. "I didn't
quite expect to see you ... yet," she said.

"It's the unexpected that happens," I remarked. "I've come back at last,
though in slightly different circumstances."

"I know, Jim. I've heard."

"He told you," I suggested, and nodded towards the door she had just
closed.

"How do you know that?" she a