A
flirt, and engaged, too, was she? No matter. He wrecked himself with
her, and they lived on mussels and edible roots and berries, and some
canned stuff from the ship, and he built a hut of "native thatch," and
found a deposit of rubies, gathering bushels of them, and he became her
affianced the very day the smoke of the rescuing steamer blackened the
horizon. And throughout an idyllic union they always thought rather
regretfully of that island; they had had such a beautiful time there.
And his oldest son, who was left-handed, pitched a ball that was the
despair of every batter in both leagues!
Such had been the devastation of that one drooping glance. This vision,
enjoyed while he ate of the luncheon brought to him, might have been
prolonged. He hadn't remembered a quarter of the delightful
contingencies that arise when the right man and woman are wrecked on an
island, but he looked up from his plate to find Breede regarding him and
his abundant food with a look of such stony malignance that he could eat
no more--Breede with his glass of diluted milk and one intensely
hygienic cracker!
But during pauses in the afternoon's work the island vision became
blurred by the singular energies of the flapper. What did she mean by
looking at him that way? There was something ominous about it. He had to
admit that in some occult way she benumbed his will power. He did not
believe he would dare be wrecked on a desert island with the other one,
if the flapper knew about it.
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