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“You’re a nice little girl, but——”

She cut him off again: “If you knew how I fought that evening and night and all the next day and night—and how early I started out to find you. Had you begun to hunt for me?”

“No,” said he, more curt than convincing.

“Then what were you thinking about—that first morning down by the waterfall?”

He flushed guiltily. Very poor, indeed, at all kinds of deception was Chang—except, possibly, self-deception.

“I watched you for half an hour. You were sketching a face, Chang—instead of the waterfall. Whose face was it?”

“Yours,” he admitted, as if the matter were of no consequence. With a smile of patient indulgence he went on: “Oh, if you’d had experience! But you haven’t. That’s why you’re carrying on like this. Now, listen to me, child——”

“I like Rix better,” she interposed.

“No matter,” he said, with a gesture of impatient brushing away. “I don’t love you. I won’t marry you. And you’ve got to stop proposing to me. I never heard of such vanity! What would people think of you?”