Part 3 (1/2)

”You're a clever girl. Not many girls can quote the poets and rattle off verses as you can. I suppose your father's an educated kind of man and has a good library?” he added after a pause.

Gabrielle's hearty peal of laughter at the idea of her father possessing a library made the frightened parrots flutter in a wheel-like procession over the belt of sh.o.r.eward mangroves. Then she said: ”Well, my father has got a lot of books, but they really belonged to a s.h.i.+p's captain-a nice old man who lived with us years ago, when I was a child.” Then she added: ”His s.h.i.+p was blown ash.o.r.e here in a typhoon and when he went away he left all his books behind him in Dad's bungalow. I've learned almost all I know from those books.” Saying this, she pointed with her finger towards the sh.o.r.e, and said: ”From the top of that hill you can see the old captain's s.h.i.+p to-day: it's a big wreck with three masts.

Father told me that the old captain often got sentimental and went up on the hills to stare through a telescope at his old s.h.i.+p lying on the reefs.”

”How romantic! So I've to thank the old captain that you can quote the works of the poets to me,” said Hillary. Then he added: ”But still, you're a clever girl, there's no doubt about it.”

”I'm secretly wicked, down in the very depths of me.”

”No! Surely not!” gasped the apprentice as he stared at the girl.

Then he smiled and said quickly: ”What you've just said is proof enough that you're not wicked. You're imaginative, and so you imagine that you have limitations that no one else has. If anyone's wicked it's me, I know,” he added, laughing quietly.

”I've got the limitations right enough, that's why I feel so strange and miserable at times.”

”Don't feel miserable, please don't,” said Hillary softly as he blessed the silence of the primitive spot and the opportunity that had arisen for his direct sympathy.

”You must remember that we all have our besetting sins, and that the majority of us think our besetting sin is our prime virtue,” he said.

”I've been all over the world but never met a girl like you before,” he added in a sentimental way.

”I can take that as the reverse of a compliment,” said Gabrielle, laughing musically.

”Believe me, Gabrielle, I would not say things to you that I might say in a bantering way to other girls I've met. I dreamed of you when I was a child, so to speak. It seems strange that I should at last have met you out here in the Solomon Isles, that we should be sitting here by a blue lagoon in which our shadows seem to swim together.”

”Look into those dark waters,” he added after a pause.

Gabrielle looked, and as she looked Hillary became bold and placed his hand softly on her shoulder, amongst her golden tresses that tumbled about her neck. And Gabrielle, who could see every act as she stared on their images in the water, smiled.

”It's a pity you're so wicked,” said Hillary jokingly. Then he added suddenly: ”Ah! I could fall madly in love with a girl, like you if only I thought I were worthy of you.-What's the matter?”

”Oh, nothing,” said Gabrielle. Hillary noticed that she had become pale and trembling.

”Why, you've caught a chill!” he said in monstrous concern, though it was 100 in the shade and the heat-blisters were ripe to burst on his neck.

”Dad thinks everything that he does is quite perfect,” Gabrielle said, just to change the conversation, for the look she saw in the young apprentice's eyes strangely smote her heart.

”Of course he does,” said Hillary absently.

The girl, looking eagerly into his face, said: ”You know quite well that you play your violin beautifully, I suppose?”

”I'm the rottenest player in the world.”

The girl at this gave a merry ripple of laughter and said: ”Now I _do_ believe in your theory, for I've heard you play beautifully in the grog bar by Rokeville. You played this”-here she closed her lips and hummed a melody from _Il Trovatore_.

”Good gracious! you don't mean to tell me that you hover about the Rokeville grog shanty after dark?” exclaimed Hillary.

Gabrielle seemed surprised at his serious look, then she burst into another silvery peal of laughter that echoed to the mountains.

Hillary looked into her eyes, and seeing that eerie light of witchery which so fascinated him, felt that he had met his fate.

”If I can't get her to love me I'm as good as dead,” was his mental comment. Even the music of her laughter thrilled him. Then she rose from the ferns, and sitting on the banyan bough again started to swing to and fro, singing some weird strain that she had evidently learnt from the tambu dancers in the tribal villages.