s it your feet point not straight before you?"

"I do not know, save that they are unlike the feet of other women."

A satisfied light crept into his eyes, but otherwise he gave no sign.

"Like other women, your hair is black; but have you ever noticed that
it is soft and fine, softer and finer than the hair of other women?"

"I have noticed," she answered shortly, for she was not pleased at
such cold analysis of her sex-deficiencies.

"It is a year, now, since I took you from your people," he went on,
"and you are nigh as shy and afraid of me as when first I looked upon
you. How does this thing be?"

Li Wan shook her head. "I am afraid of you, Canim, you are so big and
strange. And further, before you looked upon me even, I was afraid of
all the young men. I do not know ... I cannot say ... only it seemed,
somehow, as though I should not be for them, as though ..."

"Ay," he encouraged, impatient at her faltering.

"As though they were not my kind."

"Not your kind?" he demanded slowly. "Then what is your kind?"

"I do not know, I ..." She shook her head in a bewildered manner. "I
cannot put into words the way I felt. It was strangeness in me. I was
unlike other maidens, who sought the young men slyly. I could not
care for the young men that way. It would have been a great wrong, it
seemed, and an ill deed."

"What is the first thing you remember?" Canim asked with abrupt
irrelevance.

"Pow-Wah-Kaan, my mother."

"And naught else before Pow-Wah-Kaan?"

"Naught else."

But Canim, holding her eyes with his, searched her secret soul and saw
it waver.

"Think, and think hard, Li Wan!" he threatened.

She stammered, and her eyes were piteous and pleading, but his will
dominated her and wrung from her lips the reluctant speech.

"But it was only dreams, Canim, ill dreams of childhood, shadows of
things not real, visions such as the dogs, sleeping in the sun-warmth,
behold and whine out against."

"Tell me," he commanded, "of the things before Pow-Wah-Kaan, your
mother."

"They are forgotten memories," she protested. "As a child I dreamed
awake, with my eyes open to the day, and when I spoke of the strange
things I saw I was laughed at, and the other children were afraid
and drew away from me. And when I spoke of the things I saw to
Pow-Wah-Kaan, she chided me and said they were evil; also she beat me.
It was a sickness, I believe, like the falling-sickness that comes to
old men; and in time I grew b