by calling it chivalry. I thank heaven that I was not born a man.

Good-night. Do think it over. And don't be foolish. What Berande
needs is good American hustle. You don't know what that is. You

are a muddler. Besides, you are enervated. I'm fresh to the
climate. Let me be your partner, and you'll see me rattle the dry

bones of the Solomons. Confess, I've rattled yours already."
"I should say so," he answered. "Really, you know, you have. I

never received such a dressing-down in my life. If any one had
ever told me that I'd be a party even to the present situation. . .

. Yes, I confess, you have rattled my dry bones pretty
considerably."

"But that is nothing to the rattling they are going to get," she
assured him, as he rose and took her hand. "Good-night. And do,

do give me a rational decision in the morning."
CHAPTER XIII--THE LOGIC OF YOUTH

"I wish I knew whether you are merely headstrong, or whether you
really intend to be a Solomon planter," Sheldon said in the

morning, at breakfast.
"I wish you were more adaptable," Joan retorted. "You have more

preconceived notions than any man I ever met. Why in the name of
common sense, in the name of . . . fair play, can't you get it into

your head that I am different from the women you have known, and
treat me accordingly? You surely ought to know I am different. I

sailed my own schooner here--skipper, if you please. I came here
to make my living. You know that; I've told you often enough. It

was Dad's plan, and I'm carrying it out, just as you are trying to
carry out your Hughie's plan. Dad started to sail and sail until

he could find the proper islands for planting. He died, and I
sailed and sailed until I arrived here. Well,"--she shrugged her

shoulders--"the schooner is at the bottom of the sea. I can't sail
any farther, therefore I remain here. And a planter I shall

certainly be."
"You see--" he began.

"I haven't got to the point," she interrupted. "Looking back on my
conduct from the moment I first set foot on your beach, I can see

no false pretence that I have made about myself or my intentions.
I was my natural self to you from the first. I told you my plans;

and yet you sit there and calmly tell me that you don't know
whether I really intend to become a planter, or whether it is all

obstinacy and pretence. Now let me assure you, for the last time,
that I really and truly shall become a planter, thanks to you, or

in spite of you. Do you want me for a partner?"
"But do you realize that I would be looked upon as the most foolish

jackanapes in the South Seas if I took a young girl like you in
with me here on Berande?" he asked.

"No; decidedly not. But there you are again, worrying about what
idiots and the generally evil-minded will think of you. I should

have thought you had learned self-reliance on Berande, instead of
needing to lean upon the moral support of every whisky-guzzling

worthless South Sea vagabond."
He smiled, and said, -

"Yes, that is the worst of it. You are unanswerable. Yours is the
logic of youth, and no man can answer that. The facts of life can,

but they have no place in the logic of youth. Youth must try to
live according to its logic. That is the only way to learn

better."
"There is no harm in trying?" she interjected.

"But there is. That is the very point. The facts always smash
youth's logic, and they usually smash youth's heart, too. It's

like platonic friendships and . . . and all such things; they are
all right in theory, but they won't work in practice. I used to

believe in such things once. That is why I am here in the Solomons
at present."

Joan was impatient. He saw that she could not understand. Life
was too clearly simple to her. It was only the youth who was

arguing with him, the youth with youth's pure-minded and invincible
reasoning. Hers was only the boy's soul in a woman's body. He

looked at her flushed, eager face, at the great ropes of hair
coiled on the small head, at the rounded lines of the figure

showing plainly through the home-made gown, and at the eyes--boy's
eyes, under cool, level brows--and he wondered why a being that was

so much beautiful woman should be no woman at all. Why in the
deuce was she not carroty-haired, or cross-eyed, or hare-lipped?

"Suppose we do become partners on Berande," he said, at the same
time experiencing a feeling of fright at the prospect that was

tangled with a contradictory feeling of charm, "either I'll fall in
love with you, or you with me. Propinquity is dangerous, you know.

In fact, it is propinquity that usually gives the facer to the
logic of youth."

"If you think I came to the Solomons to get married--" she began
wrathfully. "Well, there are better men in Hawaii, that's all.

Really, you know, the way you harp on that one string would lead an
unprejudiced listener to conclude that you are prurient-minded--"

She stopped, appalled. His face had gone red and white with such
abruptness as to startle her. He was patently very angry. She

sipped the last of her coffee, and arose, saying, -
"I'll wait until you are in a better temper before taking up the

discussion again. That is what's the matter with you. You get
angry too easily. Will you come swimming? The tide is just

right."
"If she were a man I'd bundle her off the plantation root and crop,

whale-boat, Tahitian sailors, sovereigns, and all," he muttered to
himself after she had left the room.

But that was the trouble. She was not a man, and where would she
go, and what would happen to her?

He got to his feet, lighted a cigarette, and her Stetson hat,
hanging on the wall over her revolver-belt, caught his eye. That

was the devil of it, too. He did not want her to go. After all,
she had not grown up yet. That was why her logic hurt. It was

only the logic of youth, but it could hurt damnably at times. At
any rate, he would resolve upon one thing: never again would he

lose his temper with her. She was a child; he must remember that.
He sighed heavily. But why in reasonableness had such a child been

incorporated in such a woman's form?
And as he continued to stare at her hat and think, the hurt he had

received passed away, and he found himself cudgelling his brains
for some way out of the muddle--for some method by which she could

remain on Berande. A chaperone! Why not? He could send to Sydney
on the first steamer for one. He could -

Her trilling laughter smote upon his reverie, and he stepped to the
screen-door, through which he could see her running down the path

to the beach. At her heels ran two of her sailors, Papehara and
Mahameme, in scarlet lava-lavas, with naked sheath-knives gleaming

in their belts. It was another sample of her wilfulness. Despite
entreaties and commands, and warnings of the danger from sharks,

she persisted in swimming at any and all times, and by special
preference, it seemed to him, immediately after eating.

He watched her take the water, diving cleanly, like a boy, from the
end of the little pier; and he watched her strike out with single

overhand stroke, her henchmen swimming a dozen feet on either side.
He did not have much faith in their ability to beat off a hungry

man-eater, though he did believe, implicitly, that their lives
would go bravely before hers in case of an attack.

Straight out they swam, their heads growing smaller and smaller.
There was a slight, restless heave to the sea, and soon the three