"Well--er--not exactly in the way in which I love you."
"Do you mean to tell me he would fall in love any other way with any respectable woman?" flashed out the girl, changing her tactics to the great bewilderment of the more conventional man.
"Well, I don’t wish to say anything about this island person, of course, but--"
"George," said the girl, "she’s as beautiful as a dream, much more beautiful than I am."
This was a statement which Harnash could not allow to pass uncontradicted, and he denied it in the most effective way, which interrupted further speech, if only for a moment.
"Nonsense, impossible!" exclaimed he, when the kiss was finished.
"I only saw a limp, drenched figure being hoisted aboard. I noticed she was whiter than the people of the islands we have visited."
"Why, her skin, save for the touch of the sun, is whiter and finer than mine. Her figure, which has obviously never known the restraints of--of--civilization is absolutely perfect. Her hair is like spun gold, and there’s enough of it to cover half her beautiful little body."
"What you say is very interesting," observed Harnash, indifferently, "but it doesn’t particularly concern me. The only type of woman that appeals to me is your type."
He emphasized this statement in truly appropriate, if somewhat conventional, fashion, and Stephanie received statement and emphasis alike with obvious satisfaction.
"There’s another thing," she went on, when this second kiss had also run its course, "she doesn’t look in any way--form or color or feature--like a South Sea islander. In these weary months of cruising and visiting island after island we have seen a great many, and not one of them has been as she."
"A European. Our kind of people. She has white race somehow stamped all over her."
"Who knows? She didn’t answer to any European language at my command. There wasn’t a thing on her save the remains of a belt that seemed to have held some kind of a native skirt."
"After coming through that tidal wave the surprise is not that she had nothing on, but that they were alive at all. Beekman was in about the same case. Indeed, I don’t think he had anything on, either. Probably the suit he wore when he went adrift was pretty old and could not stand much weathering. It was a happy thought of yours to have me bring some of Beekman’s clothes with us in case we did find him. He couldn’t have worn your father’s or even mine now. He seems to have grown broader somehow. He looked as though he were a head taller than I am and he seemed in splendid bodily condition."