rom the light," she answered; adding, "Oh,
accursed man! for your own ends you have caused me to be bewitched, ah!
and that which was born of me also, and bewitched I am by those shadows
that you bade me seek, which now will never leave me. Nor, is this all.
You swore to me that if I would do your will I should become great, ay!
and you took me from one who would have made me great and whom I should
have pushed on to victory. But now it seems that for nothing I made that
awful voyage into the deeps of death; and for nothing, yet living, am
I become the sport of those that dwell there. How am I greater than I
was--I who am but the second wife of a fallen witch-doctor, who sits
in the sun, day by day, while age gathers on his head like frost upon a
bush? Where are all your high schemes now? Where is the fruit of wisdom
that I gathered for you? Answer, Wizard, whom I have learned to hate,
but from whom I cannot escape!"

"Truly," said Hokosa in a bitter voice, "for all my sins against them
the heavens have laid a heavy fate upon my head, that thus with flesh
and spirit I should worship a woman who loathes me. One comfort only is
left to me, that you dare not take my life lest another should be added
to those shadows who companion you, and what I bid you, that you must
still do. Ay, you fear the dark, Noma; yet did I command you to rise
and go stand alone through the long night yonder in the burying-place of
kings, why, you must obey. Come, I command you--go!"

"Nay, nay!" she wailed in an extremity of terror. Yet she rose and
went towards the door sideways, for her hands were outstretched in
supplication to him.

"Come back," he said, "and listen: If a hunter has nurtured up a fierce
dog, wherewith alone he can gain his livelihood, he tries to tame that
dog by love, does he not? And if it will not become gentle, then, the
brute being necessary to him, he tames it by fear. I am the hunter and,
Noma, you are the hound; and since this curse is on me that I cannot
live without you, why I must master you as best I may. Yet, believe me,
I would not cause you fear or pain, and it saddens me that you should
be haunted by these sick fancies, for they are nothing more. I have seen
such cases before to-day, and I have noted that they can be cured by
mixing with fresh faces and travelling in new countries. Noma, I think
it would be well that, after your late sickness, according to the custom
of the women of our people, you should pa