But how to approach her?  He divined the fanatical love of freedom in her, the deep-seated antipathy for restraint of any sort.  No man could ever put his arm around her and win her.  She would flutter away like a frightened bird.  Approach by contact—­that, he realized, was the one thing he must never do.  His hand-clasp must be what it had always been, the hand-clasp of hearty friendship and nothing more.  Never by action must he advertise his feeling for her.  Remained speech.  But what speech?  Appeal to her love?  But she did not love him.  Appeal to her brain?  But it was apparently a boy’s brain.  All the deliciousness and fineness of a finely bred woman was hers; but, for all he could discern, her mental processes were sexless and boyish.  And yet speech it must be, for a beginning had to be made somewhere, some time; her mind must be made accustomed to the idea, her thoughts turned upon the matter of marriage.

And so he rode overseeing about the plantation, with tightly drawn and puckered brows, puzzling over the problem, and steeling himself to the first attempt.  A dozen ways he planned an intricate leading up to the first breaking of the ice, and each time some link in the chain snapped and the talk went off on unexpected and irrelevant lines.  And then one morning, quite fortuitously, the opportunity came.

“My dearest wish is the success of Berande,” Joan had just said, apropos of a discussion about the cheapening of freights on copra to market.

“Do you mind if I tell you the dearest wish of my heart?” he promptly returned.  “I long for it.  I dream about it.  It is my dearest desire.”

He paused and looked at her with intent significance; but it was plain to him that she thought there was nothing more at issue than mutual confidences about things in general.

“Yes, go ahead,” she said, a trifle impatient at his delay.

“I love to think of the success of Berande,” he said; “but that is secondary.  It is subordinate to the dearest wish, which is that some day you will share Berande with me in a completer way than that of mere business partnership.  It is for you, some day, when you are ready, to be my wife.”

She started back from him as if she had been stung.  Her face went white on the instant, not from maidenly embarrassment, but from the anger which he could see flaming in her eyes.

“This taking for granted!—­this when I am ready!” she cried passionately.  Then her voice swiftly became cold and steady, and she talked in the way he imagined she must have talked business with Morgan and Raff at Guvutu.  “Listen to me, Mr. Sheldon.  I like you very well, though you are slow and a muddler; but I want you to understand, once and for all, that I did not come to the Solomons to get married.  That is an affliction I could have accumulated at home, without sailing ten thousand miles after it.  I have my own way to make in the world, and I came to the Solomons to do it.  Getting married is not making my way in the world.  It may do for some women, but not for me, thank you.  When I sit down to talk over the freight on copra, I don’t care to have proposals of marriage sandwiched in.  Besides—­besides—­”