ead in his fingers.

"Once more I ask why, How?"

The other's eyes did not shift, nor a muscle of his body.

"Because she is white and they are white, and I--am an Indian."

At last it had come: the thing Landor had tried to avoid, had hitherto
succeeded in avoiding. Yet face to face the big man could ignore it no
longer. It was true, as true as human nature; and he knew it was true.
Other men, brothers of his own race, would do this thing--as they would
do anything for money; and he, Landor, he who had raised her from a
child, who had adopted her as his own daughter, he it was who would make
it possible!

Involuntarily the big man got to his feet. He did not attempt to move
about, he did not speak. There, standing, he fought himself inch by
inch; battled against the knowledge of the inevitable that had been
dogging him day by day, hour by hour. A long time he stood so, his great
hands locked, his face toward the blank tent wall opposite; then at last
he turned.

"I realise what you mean, How," he said swiftly, "and understand the way
you feel. God knows I wish it were different, wish I did not believe
what you say true; but things are as the are. What we have to do now is
the best thing possible under the circumstances." He sat down in the
chair again heavily, his hands still locked in his lap. "If wrong has
been done I am to blame, I myself, in raising you and Bess together. I
might have known that it was inevitable, you two here alone to care for
each other; but I was poor then, and I never thought that Bess--"

"Mr. Landor--"

The big man halted. For the first time he realised the admission of what
he had been saying, the inevitable implication--and he was silent. For
seconds likewise the Indian was still; but in them he was looking at the
other steadily, in a way he had never looked at him before, with an
intensity that was haunting.

"So you, too, feel that way," he said at last slowly. There was no anger
in the voice, nor menace; merely wonder, and, yes, pathos--terrible,
gripping pathos. "I knew that everyone else felt so--everyone except
Bess herself; but you--you--I did not know that before, Mr. Landor."

Mute as before the big man sat motionless, listening. From the bottom of
his soul he wished to say something in refutation, in self-defence; but
he could not. There was nothing to say.

"No, I never even dreamed of such a thing," went on the repressed voice,
"not even when at first you were slow