,
whether sensuous or spiritual, tender or irritating, he was unable to
say.

"Well, princess of Samburan," he said at last, "have I found favour in
your sight?"

She seemed to wake up, and shook her head.

"I was thinking," she murmured very low.

"Thought, action--so many snares! If you begin to think you will be
unhappy."

"I wasn't thinking of myself!" she declared with a simplicity which took
Heyst aback somewhat.

"On the lips of a moralist this would sound like a rebuke," he said,
half seriously; "but I won't suspect you of being one. Moralists and I
haven't been friends for many years."

She had listened with an air of attention.

"I understood you had no friends," she said. "I am pleased that there's
nobody to find fault with you for what you have done. I like to think
that I am in no one's way."

Heyst would have said something, but she did not give him time.
Unconscious of the movement he made she went on:

"What I was thinking to myself was, why are you here?"

Heyst let himself sink on his elbow again.

"If by 'you' you mean 'we'--well, you know why we are here."

She bent her gaze down at him.

"No, it isn't that. I meant before--all that time before you came across
me and guessed at once that I was in trouble, with no one to turn to.
And you know it was desperate trouble too."

Her voice fell on the last words, as if she would end there; but there
was something so expectant in Heyst's attitude as he sat at her feet,
looking up at her steadily, that she continued, after drawing a short,
quick breath:

"It was, really. I told you I had been worried before by bad fellows.
It made me unhappy, disturbed--angry, too. But oh, how I hated, hated,
hated that man!"

"That man" was the florid Schomberg with the military bearing,
benefactor of white men ('decent food to eat in decent company')--mature
victim of belated passion. The girl shuddered. The characteristic
harmoniousness of her face became, as it were, decomposed for an
instant. Heyst was startled.

"Why think of it now?" he cried.

"It's because I was cornered that time. It wasn't as before. It was
worse, ever so much. I wished I could die of my fright--and yet it's
only now that I begin to understand what a horror it might have been.
Yes, only now, since we--"

Heyst stirred a little.

"Came here," he finished.

Her tenseness relaxed, her flushed face went gradually back to its
normal tint.

"Yes," she said indifferently,