rget not my
name."[4]

There was a grandeur of resolution in her tone, in her glance, as she
uttered these last words, her lustrous eyes, wide and clear, meeting his
full. Laurence, standing there gazing after the tall, retreating form of
the chief's daughter, felt something like a sense of exultation stealing
over him. His scheme seemed already to glow with success. He had
suspected for some time that Lindela regarded him with more than favour;
and indeed, while weighing the prospect of casting in his lot with the
Ba-gcatya, he had already in his own mind marked her out to share it.
Now, however, the thing had become imperative. In order to save not
merely his life, but to escape a fate which brooded over him with a
peculiarly haunting horror, he had got to do this thing, to take to
wife, according to the customs of the Ba-gcatya, the daughter of
Nondwana, the niece of the king. Then not a man in the nation dare raise
a hand against him; and the dour priesthood of the Spider might look
further for their victim--and might find in their selection one much
more remote from the throne.

And now that he was face to face with the prospect, it struck him as
anything but an unpleasing one. Such an alliance would place him among
the most powerful chiefs in the land. All the ambition in the
adventurer's soul warmed to the prospect. To be high in authority among
this fine race, part-ruler over this splendid country, sport in
abundance, and that of the most enthralling kind--war occasionally; to
dwell, too, in the strong revivifying air of these grand uplands! Why, a
man might live forever under such conditions.

And the other side of the picture--what was it? Even if he returned to
civilization--even if it were possible--he would now return almost as
poor as he had quitted it,--to the old squalid life, with its shifts and
straits. His whole soul sickened over the recollection. Nothing could
compensate for such--nothing. Besides, put nakedly, it amounted to this:
His experiences of respectability had been disastrous. They had been
such as to draw out all that was latently evil in his nature, and,
indeed, to implant within him traits which at one time he could never
have suspected himself capable of harbouring. Physically it had reduced
his system to the lowest. All things considered, he could not think that
the adventurous life--hard, unscrupulous, lawless as it was--had changed
him for the worse. It had developed many good tra