Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/142

 "In one way it is, but still it's hard to explain how the unattached man from the North is held by the tropics. That's what made me catch at the old bait when I had a chance to go to the Cantonese District to look into the Chinese boycott affair. And it's the same thing, I suppose, that's taking me south to Locombia."

The girl gave vent to a gesture of impatience, [sic]

"That doesn't explain."

"What more can I say?" he demanded. He struggled to conceal the fact that he was afraid of her, that life had always taught him to be wary before the unknown factor in the equation of adventure, that her very softness was something against which he had to steel himself, grimly and resolutely.

"You can say everything you have so carefully left unsaid," was her unexpectedly spirited answer.

"There's nothing more," he protested, feeling the silence grow heavy about him.

"I trusted you!" said the girl at last.

"And I would trust you!" he said quite openly and honestly.

"You mean you are not free to speak?" she persisted, evading the personal issue which his declaration had thrust before her.

"I mean that it's worse than foolish for us to quibble over side issues when we're