you, monsieur."

He looked down, his breath laboring. I could look at him now without
recoil, for a common humiliation bound us. We were white and we had
been tricked by a savage. We sat in heavy silence.

At last Starling spoke dully. "Why did Pemaou wait so long?"

I gripped my knife the closer. "That we shall learn when we learn what
he has done with the woman."

He looked up with his jaw shaking. "Monsieur, we must make haste."

But I shook my head. "Monsieur, no. We must await Pierre."

The fog was withdrawing. It was noon, and I rose and made ready a
grave for Simon. I chose a spot under a pine where I had seen the
woman sit, and I dug deep as my crude implements would permit. Then I
piled stones on the mound. The Englishman helped me, and together we
said a prayer. We did not comment till our work was over. Then
Starling looked down at the mound.

"I wonder why he was killed? The others surrendered."

I shrugged a trifle bitterly. "He loved the woman. It was not her
fault. I doubt that she knew it, and she could not help it. But it
cost him his life, for it made him attempt to carry a forlorn hope.
And she never even knew. It is suicide to love a woman hopelessly,
monsieur."

It was hideous when we went back to our seats by the ashes. The sun
had come out hot and nauseating, and the flies buzzed horribly. We
tried to crowd down food, but we could not swallow. We sat and chewed
on our despairing thoughts, and hate that was a compound of physical
faintness and sick uncertainty rose between us.

The Englishman took a miniature from his pocket and handed it to me.

"She gave it to me herself," he said. "With laughter and with kisses,
monsieur."

I tried to wave the picture away, but I had not strength to resist
looking. It was no profile that I saw. The brown eyes looked full in
mine; merry eyes, challenging, fun-crowded, innocent. There were no
sombre shadows there. There was spirit in plenty, but no sorrow.
White shoulders rose from clouds of pink gauze, and the hair was
powdered and pearl-wreathed and piled high in a coronet. It was not
the face of the woman that I knew. I said so, and returned the
portrait to the Englishman.

He could not resist baiting me. "You do not like it, monsieur?"

I shook my head. "It is nothing to me. It is the face of a laughing,
trusting, untouched girl. I have never seen her."

"You say that you married her."

"Monsieur, this is