ere intimate and charming,
humorous sometimes, especially of late, and tender. At first they
suggested that he was homesick, they were full of his desire to get back
to Chicago and Isabel; and, a little anxiously, she wrote begging him to
persevere. She was afraid that he might throw up his opportunity and
come racing back. She did not want her lover to lack endurance and she
quoted to him the lines:

_"I could not love thee, dear, so much,_
_Loved I not honour more."_

But presently he seemed to settle down and it made Isabel very happy to
observe his growing enthusiasm to introduce American methods into that
forgotten corner of the world. But she knew him, and at the end of the
year, which was the shortest time he could possibly stay in Tahiti, she
expected to have to use all her influence to dissuade him from coming
home. It was much better that he should learn the business thoroughly,
and if they had been able to wait a year there seemed no reason why they
should not wait another. She talked it over with Bateman Hunter, always
the most generous of friends (during those first few days after Edward
went she did not know what she would have done without him), and they
decided that Edward's future must stand before everything. It was with
relief that she found as the time passed that he made no suggestion of
returning.

"He's splendid, isn't he?" she exclaimed to Bateman.

"He's white, through and through."

"Reading between the lines of his letter I know he hates it over there,
but he's sticking it out because...."

She blushed a little and Bateman, with the grave smile which was so
attractive in him, finished the sentence for her.

"Because he loves you."

"It makes me feel so humble," she said.

"You're wonderful, Isabel, you're perfectly wonderful."

But the second year passed and every month Isabel continued to receive a
letter from Edward, and presently it began to seem a little strange
that he did not speak of coming back. He wrote as though he were
settled definitely in Tahiti, and what was more, comfortably settled.
She was surprised. Then she read his letters again, all of them, several
times; and now, reading between the lines indeed, she was puzzled to
notice a change which had escaped her. The later letters were as tender
and as delightful as the first, but the tone was different. She was
vaguely suspicious of their humour, she had the instinctive mistrust of
her sex for that unaccountab