An hour afterward, Dr. Welshmere left the patient comfortable and attended to, and went down to the beach to go on board, promising to come back to dinner.  Joan and Sheldon, standing on the veranda, watched him depart.

“I’ll never have it in for the missionaries again since seeing them here in the Solomons,” she said, seating herself in a steamer-chair.

She looked at Sheldon and began to laugh.

“That’s right,” he said.  “It’s the way I feel, playing the fool and trying to murder a guest.”

“But you haven’t told me what it was all about.”

“You,” he answered shortly.

“Me?  But you just said it wasn’t.”

“Oh, it wasn’t the kiss.”  He walked over to the railing and leaned against it, facing her.  “But it was about you all the same, and I may as well tell you.  You remember, I warned you long ago what would happen when you wanted to become a partner in Berande.  Well, all the beach is gossiping about it; and Tudor persisted in repeating the gossip to me.  So you see it won’t do for you to stay on here under present conditions.  It would be better if you went away.”

“But I don’t want to go away,” she objected with rueful countenance.

“A chaperone, then—­”

“No, nor a chaperone.”

“But you surely don’t expect me to go around shooting every slanderer in the Solomons that opens his mouth?” he demanded gloomily.

“No, nor that either,” she answered with quick impulsiveness.  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do.  We’ll get married and put a stop to it all.  There!”

He looked at her in amazement, and would have believed that she was making fun of him had it not been for the warm blood that suddenly suffused her cheeks.

“Do you mean that?” he asked unsteadily.  “Why?”

“To put a stop to all the nasty gossip of the beach.  That’s a pretty good reason, isn’t it?”

The temptation was strong enough and sudden enough to make him waver, but all the disgust came back to him that was his when he lay in the grass fighting gnats and cursing adventure, and he answered,—­

“No; it is worse than no reason at all.  I don’t care to marry you as a matter of expedience—­”

“You are the most ridiculous creature!” she broke in, with a flash of her old-time anger.  “You talk love and marriage to me, very much against my wish, and go mooning around over the plantation week after week because you can’t have me, and look at me when you think I’m not noticing and when all the time I’m wondering when you had your last square meal because of the hungry look in your eyes, and make eyes at my revolver-belt hanging on a nail, and fight duels about me, and all the rest—­and—­and now, when I say I’ll marry you, you do yourself the honour of refusing me.”

“You can’t make me any more ridiculous than I feel,” he answered, rubbing the lump on his forehead reflectively.  “And if this is the accepted romantic programme—­a duel over a girl, and the girl rushing into the arms of the winner—­why, I shall not make a bigger ass of myself by going in for it.”