let me
thank you for your chivalrous loyalty to my dear father. He has told
me how noble and self-sacrificing you have been. How can we repay you!"

Clayton noticed that she did not return his familiar salutation, but he
felt no misgivings on that score. She had been through so much. This
was no time to force his love upon her, he quickly realized.

"I am already repaid," he said. "Just to see you and Professor Porter
both safe, well, and together again. I do not think that I could much
longer have endured the pathos of his quiet and uncomplaining grief.

"It was the saddest experience of my life, Miss Porter; and then, added
to it, there was my own grief--the greatest I have ever known. But his
was so hopeless--his was pitiful. It taught me that no love, not even
that of a man for his wife may be so deep and terrible and
self-sacrificing as the love of a father for his daughter."

The girl bowed her head. There was a question she wanted to ask, but
it seemed almost sacrilegious in the face of the love of these two men
and the terrible suffering they had endured while she sat laughing and
happy beside a godlike creature of the forest, eating delicious fruits
and looking with eyes of love into answering eyes.

But love is a strange master, and human nature is still stranger, so
she asked her question.

"Where is the forest man who went to rescue you? Why did he not
return?"

"I do not understand," said Clayton. "Whom do you mean?"

"He who has saved each of us--who saved me from the gorilla."

"Oh," cried Clayton, in surprise. "It was he who rescued you? You
have not told me anything of your adventure, you know."

"But the wood man," she urged. "Have you not seen him? When we heard
the shots in the jungle, very faint and far away, he left me. We had
just reached the clearing, and he hurried off in the direction of the
fighting. I know he went to aid you."

Her tone was almost pleading--her manner tense with suppressed emotion.
Clayton could not but notice it, and he wondered, vaguely, why she was
so deeply moved--so anxious to know the whereabouts of this strange
creature.

Yet a feeling of apprehension of some impending sorrow haunted him, and
in his breast, unknown to himself, was implanted the first germ of
jealousy and suspicion of the ape-man, to whom he owed his life.

"We did not see him," he replied quietly. "He did not join us." And
then after a moment of thoughtful pause: "Po