Her voice ceased in a broken murmur, and with it, in her heart, seemed
to die the greater and most precious hope of her new life.

She had hoped that in the future the frail arms of a child would bind
their two lives together in a bond which nothing on earth could break,
a bond of affection, of gratitude, of tender respect. She the first--the
only one! But in the instant she saw the son of that other woman she
felt herself removed into the cold, the darkness, the silence of
a solitude impenetrable and immense--very far from him, beyond the
possibility of any hope, into an infinity of wrongs without any redress.

She strode nearer to Joanna. She felt towards that woman anger, envy,
jealousy. Before her she felt humiliated and enraged. She seized the
hanging sleeve of the jacket in which Joanna was hiding her face and
tore it out of her hands, exclaiming loudly--

"Let me see the face of her before whom I am only a servant and a slave.
Ya-wa! I see you!"

Her unexpected shout seemed to fill the sunlit space of cleared grounds,
rise high and run on far into the land over the unstirring tree-tops
of the forests. She stood in sudden stillness, looking at Joanna with
surprised contempt.

"A Sirani woman!" she said, slowly, in a tone of wonder.

Joanna rushed at Willems--clung to him, shrieking: "Defend me, Peter!
Defend me from that woman!"

"Be quiet. There is no danger," muttered Willems, thickly.

Aissa looked at them with scorn. "God is great! I sit in the dust at
your feet," she exclaimed jeeringly, joining her hands above her head in
a gesture of mock humility. "Before you I am as nothing." She turned to
Willems fiercely, opening her arms wide. "What have you made of me?" she
cried, "you lying child of an accursed mother! What have you made of me?
The slave of a slave. Don't speak! Your words are worse than the poison
of snakes. A Sirani woman. A woman of a people despised by all."

She pointed her finger at Joanna, stepped back, and began to laugh.

"Make her stop, Peter!" screamed Joanna. "That heathen woman. Heathen!
Heathen! Beat her, Peter."

Willems caught sight of the revolver which Aissa had laid on the seat
near the child. He spoke in Dutch to his wife, without moving his head.

"Snatch the boy--and my revolver there. See. Run to the boat. I will
keep her back. Now's the time."

Aissa came nearer. She stared at Joanna, while between the short gusts
of broken laughter she raved, fumbling distracte