embraces never had left her!

"I remember! But let's not talk of that. We settled it all on the day
you got back from Washington. We must forget it all, Jim."

"We can never forget it, Pen. We're not that kind." Jim stood struggling
for words with which to express his emotion. It always had been this
way, he told himself. The great moments of his life always found him
dumb. Even old Suma-theek could tell his thoughts more clearly than he.
Jim summoned all his resources.

"Pen, it never occurred to me you wouldn't wait. There has never been
any other woman in my life and I suppose I just couldn't picture any
other man having a hold on you. But it all goes in with my general
incompetence to grasp opportunity. I felt that I had no right to go any
farther until I had more than hopes to offer you. I planned to make a
reputation as an engineer. I knew money didn't interest you. I wanted to
offer myself to you as a man of real achievement. You see how I failed.
I have made a reputation as a grafting, inefficient engineer with the
public. You are another man's wife. But, Penelope, I am not going to
give you up!

"One gets a new view of life out here. You are wrong in staying with
Saradokis. Why should three lives be ruined by his tragedy? Pen! Pen! If
I could make you understand the torture of knowing you are married to
Sara! You are mine! From the first day I came upon you in the old
library, we belonged to each other. Pen, I've tramped the desert night
after night on the Makon and here, sweating it out with the stars and I
have determined that you shall belong to me."

Pen, white and trembling, did not move her gaze from Jim's face. All her
tired, yearning youth stood in her eyes.

Jim spoke very slowly and clearly. "Penelope, I love you. Will you leave
Saradokis and marry me?"

Pen did not answer for a long moment. A to-hee trilled from the cedar:

"O yahee! O yahai!
Sweet as arrow weed in spring!"

The Elephant lay motionless. The flag rippled and fluttered, a faint red
spot far below on the mountainside. Pen's youth was fighting with her
bitterly won philosophy. Then she summoned all her fortitude.

"Jim, dear, it would be a cowardly thing for me to leave Sara."

"It would be greater cowardice to stay. Pen, shall you and I die as Iron
Skull did? I can marry no other woman feeling as I do about you. Sara's
life is useless. Let the world say what it will. Marry me, Penelope."

"Jim, I can't."

"Why no