For a moment Joanne did not answer.  Her fingers interweaved with his, her warm little palm stroked the rough back of his hand.  Then she said, very softly: 

“And why do you think that will displease me, John, dear?  I will be ready!”

“You!”

Her eyes were on him, full, and dark, and glowing, and in them were both love and laughter.

“You dear silly John!” she laughed.  “Why don’t you come right out and tell me to stay at home, instead of—­of—­’beating ’round the bush’—­as Peggy Blackton says?  Only you don’t know what a terrible little person you’ve got, John.  You really don’t.  So you needn’t say any more.  We’ll start in the morning—­and I am going with you!”

In a flash John Aldous saw his whole scheme shaking on its foundation.

“It’s impossible—­utterly impossible!” he gasped.

“And why utterly?” she asked, bending her head so that her soft hair touched his face and lips.  “John, have you already forgotten what we said in that terrible cavern—­what we told ourselves we would have done if we had lived?  We were going adventuring, weren’t we?  And we are not dead—­but alive.  And this will be a glorious trip!  Why, John, don’t you see, don’t you understand?  It will be our honeymoon trip!”

“It will be a long, rough journey,” he argued.  “It will be hard—­hard for a woman.”

With a little laugh, Joanne sprang up and stood before him in a glow of light, tall, and slim, and splendid, and there was a sparkle of beautiful defiance and a little of triumph in her eyes as she looked down on him.

“And it will be dangerous, too?  You are going to tell me that?”

“Yes, it will be dangerous.”

She came to him and rumpled up his hair, and turned his face up so that she could look into his eyes.

“Is it worse than fever, and famine, and deep swamps, and crawling jungles?” she asked.  “Are we going to encounter worse things than beasts, and poisonous serpents, and murderous savages—­even hunger and thirst, John?  For many years we dared those together—­my father and I. Are these great, big, beautiful mountains more treacherous than those Ceylon jungles from which you ran away—­even you, John?  Are they more terrible to live in than the Great African Desert?  Are your bears worse than tigers, your wolves more terrible than lions?  And if, through years and years, I faced those things with my father, do you suppose that I want to be left behind now, and by my husband?”

So sweet and wonderful was the sound of that name as it came softly from her lips, that in his joy he forgot the part he was playing, and drew her close down in his arms, and in that moment all that remained of the scheme he had built for keeping her behind crumbled in ruin about him.

Yet in a last effort he persisted.

“Old Donald wants to travel fast—­very fast, Joanne.  I owe a great deal to him.  Even you I owe to him—­for he saved us from the ‘coyote.’”