e driven by her
moving figure, rippled in a hot wave round his body and scorched his
face in a burning touch. He drew it in with a long breath, the last
long breath of a soldier before the rush of battle, of a lover before
he takes in his arms the adored woman; the breath that gives courage to
confront the menace of death or the storm of passion.

Who was she? Where did she come from? Wonderingly he took his eyes off
her face to look round at the serried trees of the forest that stood big
and still and straight, as if watching him and her breathlessly. He
had been baffled, repelled, almost frightened by the intensity of that
tropical life which wants the sunshine but works in gloom; which seems
to be all grace of colour and form, all brilliance, all smiles, but is
only the blossoming of the dead; whose mystery holds the promise of
joy and beauty, yet contains nothing but poison and decay. He had been
frightened by the vague perception of danger before, but now, as he
looked at that life again, his eyes seemed able to pierce the fantastic
veil of creepers and leaves, to look past the solid trunks, to see
through the forbidding gloom--and the mystery was disclosed--enchanting,
subduing, beautiful. He looked at the woman. Through the checkered light
between them she appeared to him with the impalpable distinctness of
a dream. The very spirit of that land of mysterious forests, standing
before him like an apparition behind a transparent veil--a veil woven of
sunbeams and shadows.

She had approached him still nearer. He felt a strange impatience
within him at her advance. Confused thoughts rushed through his head,
disordered, shapeless, stunning. Then he heard his own voice asking--

"Who are you?"

"I am the daughter of the blind Omar," she answered, in a low but
steady tone. "And you," she went on, a little louder, "you are the white
trader--the great man of this place."

"Yes," said Willems, holding her eyes with his in a sense of extreme
effort, "Yes, I am white." Then he added, feeling as if he spoke about
some other man, "But I am the outcast of my people."

She listened to him gravely. Through the mesh of scattered hair her
face looked like the face of a golden statue with living eyes. The heavy
eyelids dropped slightly, and from between the long eyelashes she sent
out a sidelong look: hard, keen, and narrow, like the gleam of sharp
steel. Her lips were firm and composed in a graceful curve, but the
distended