"Why, if that isn't romantic, then nothing is romantic.

Think of all the younger sons out over the world, on a myriad of adventures winning to those same hearths and saddles.

And here you are in the thick of it, doing it, and here am I in the thick of it, doing it." "I--I beg pardon," he drawled.
"Well, I'm a younger daughter, then," she amended; "and I have no hearth nor saddle--I haven't anybody or anything--and I'm just as far on the edge of things as you are." "In your case, then, I'll admit there is a bit of romance," he confessed.
He could not help but think of the preceding nights, and of her sleeping in the hammock on the veranda, under mosquito curtains, her bodyguard of Tahitian sailors stretched out at the far corner of the veranda within call.

He had been too helpless to resist, but now he resolved she should have his couch inside while he would take the hammock.
"You see, I had read and dreamed about romance all my life," she was saying, "but I never, in my wildest fancies, thought that I should live it.

It was all so unexpected.