to give your consent to our
marriage. I fancied it was merely because you thought me impractical,
because I cared nothing for a life that was different, was not my own.
Nor again, even a bit ago when you asked me to promise--what I did
promise--I did not suspicion such a thing. I thought it a compliment,
the sincerest compliment I had ever received in my life: the fact that
you should trust me so, with all that was dear to you in the world."
Just perceptibly he halted, but his eyes did not leave the white man's
face. "But I see it all now. I was blind before, but I see at last. You
are like the rest, like everyone with a white skin. The fact that we've
lived together for half a generation makes no difference. You're square,
square to the end. You even like me in a way. You've given your word and
won't go back on it; but nevertheless you're sorry. Even while you urge
us to marry, to have the thing over, to have a responsibility off your
mind, you feel you are sacrificing Bess to an inferior." He halted for a
second, and even at this time Landor was conscious that it was
infinitely the longest speech he had ever heard the man make. "I don't
blame you, Mr. Landor; you can't help it; it's the instinct of your
race; but nevertheless, nevertheless--"

The voice halted abruptly, repressedly. The intense black eyes were of a
sudden looking directly past the other, straight up at the roof of the
tent. No power on earth could have made him complete that sentence, made
him admit the deadly hurt it suggested. From the unusual confidence of a
bit ago he merely lapsed into the normal, his own repressed, impassive
self. Yet as plainly as though he had spoken Landor recognised the
difference, realised as well that while outwardly there would be no
change, from this moment on so long as they both lived the confidence of
the Indian would be as dead to him as though he had ceased to exist. He
had seen it happen before. He knew the signs. With the knowledge for the
first time in the years they two had lived together he realised how much
after all he had grown to depend upon this laconic human, how much he
had lost. It was the last drop in his cup of bitterness, the crushing
straw. His great ungainly body dropped forward until his face was hid in
his hands. On the walls of the tent a distorted, exaggerated shadow
marked the movement of his shoulders as they rose and fell with his
deep, irregular breathing. Again silence fell upon them, silen