fferent now that he had left her!

For a few minutes that seemed hours to the frightened girl, she sat
with tense nerves waiting for the spring of the crouching thing that
was to end her misery of apprehension.

She almost prayed for the cruel teeth that would give her
unconsciousness and surcease from the agony of fear.

She heard a sudden, slight sound behind her. With a cry she sprang to
her feet and turned to face her end.

There stood Tarzan, his arms filled with ripe and luscious fruit.

Jane reeled and would have fallen, had not Tarzan, dropping his burden,
caught her in his arms. She did not lose consciousness, but she clung
tightly to him, shuddering and trembling like a frightened deer.

Tarzan of the Apes stroked her soft hair and tried to comfort and quiet
her as Kala had him, when, as a little ape, he had been frightened by
Sabor, the lioness, or Histah, the snake.

Once he pressed his lips lightly upon her forehead, and she did not
move, but closed her eyes and sighed.

She could not analyze her feelings, nor did she wish to attempt it.
She was satisfied to feel the safety of those strong arms, and to leave
her future to fate; for the last few hours had taught her to trust this
strange wild creature of the forest as she would have trusted but few
of the men of her acquaintance.

As she thought of the strangeness of it, there commenced to dawn upon
her the realization that she had, possibly, learned something else
which she had never really known before--love. She wondered and then
she smiled.

And still smiling, she pushed Tarzan gently away; and looking at him
with a half-smiling, half-quizzical expression that made her face
wholly entrancing, she pointed to the fruit upon the ground, and seated
herself upon the edge of the earthen drum of the anthropoids, for
hunger was asserting itself.

Tarzan quickly gathered up the fruit, and, bringing it, laid it at her
feet; and then he, too, sat upon the drum beside her, and with his
knife opened and prepared the various fruits for her meal.

Together and in silence they ate, occasionally stealing sly glances at
one another, until finally Jane broke into a merry laugh in which
Tarzan joined.

"I wish you spoke English," said the girl.

Tarzan shook his head, and an expression of wistful and pathetic
longing sobered his laughing eyes.

Then Jane tried speaking to him in French, and then in German; but she
had to laugh at her own blundering att