a piercing stare and felt the convulsive pressure of her hands
pinning his arms along his body. A second dragged itself out,

slow and bitter, like a day of mourning; a second full of regret
and grief for that faith in her which took its flight from the

shattered ruins of his trust. She was holding him! She too! He
felt her heart give a great leap, his head slipped down on her

knees, he closed his eyes and there was nothing. Nothing! It
was as if she had died; as though her heart had leaped out into

the night, abandoning him, defenceless and alone, in an empty
world.

His head struck the ground heavily as she flung him aside in her
sudden rush. He lay as if stunned, face up and, daring not move,

did not see the struggle, but heard the piercingshriek of mad
fear, her low angry words; another shriek dying out in a moan.

When he got up at last he looked at Aissa kneeling over her
father, he saw her bent back in the effort of holding him down,

Omar's contorted limbs, a hand thrown up above her head and her
quick movement grasping the wrist. He made an impulsive step

forward, but she turned a wild face to him and called out over
her shoulder--

"Keep back! Do not come near! Do not. . . ."
And he stopped short, his arms hanginglifelessly by his side, as

if those words had changed him into stone. She was afraid of his
possible violence, but in the unsettling of all his convictions

he was struck with the frightful thought that she preferred to
kill her father all by herself; and the last stage of their

struggle, at which he looked as though a red fog had filled his
eyes, loomed up with an unnaturalferocity, with a sinister

meaning; like something monstrous and depraved, forcing its
complicity upon him under the cover of that awful night. He was

horrified and grateful; drawn irresistibly to her--and ready to
run away. He could not move at first--then he did not want to

stir. He wanted to see what would happen. He saw her lift, with
a tremendous effort, the apparentlylifeless body into the hut,

and remained standing, after they disappeared, with the vivid
image in his eyes of that head swaying on her shoulder, the lower

jaw hanging down, collapsed, passive, meaningless, like the head
of a corpse.

Then after a while he heard her voice speaking inside, harshly,
with an agitated abruptness of tone; and in answer there were

groans and broken murmurs of exhaustion. She spoke louder. He
heard her sayingviolently--"No! No! Never!"

And again a plaintive murmur of entreaty as of some one begging
for a supreme favour, with a last breath. Then she said--

"Never! I would sooner strike it into my own heart."
She came out, stood panting for a short moment in the doorway,

and then stepped into the firelight. Behind her, through the
darkness came the sound of words calling the vengeance of heaven

on her head, rising higher, shrill, strained, repeating the curse
over and over again--till the voice cracked in a passionate

shriek that died out into hoarse muttering ending with a deep and
prolonged sigh. She stood facing Willems, one hand behind her

back, the other raised in a gesture compelling attention, and she
listened in that attitude till all was still inside the hut.

Then she made another step forward and her hand dropped slowly.
"Nothing but misfortune," she whispered, absently, to herself.

"Nothing but misfortune to us who are not white." The anger and
excitement died out of her face, and she looked straight at

Willems with an intense and mournful gaze.
He recovered his senses and his power of speech with a sudden

start.
"Aissa," he exclaimed, and the words broke out through his lips

with hurried nervousness. "Aissa! How can I live here? Trust
me. Believe in me. Let us go away from here. Go very far away!

Very far; you and I!"
He did not stop to ask himself whether he could escape, and how,

and where. He was carried away by the flood of hate, disgust,
and contempt of a white man for that blood which is not his

blood, for that race which is not his race; for the brown skins;
for the hearts false like the sea, blacker than night. This

feeling of repulsion overmastered his reason in a clear
conviction of the impossibility for him to live with her people.

He urged her passionately" target="_blank" title="ad.多情地；热烈地">passionately to fly with him because out of all that
abhorred crowd he wanted this one woman, but wanted her away from

them, away from that race of slaves and cut-throats from which
she sprang. He wanted her for himself--far from everybody, in

some safe and dumb solitude. And as he spoke his anger and
contempt rose, his hate became almost fear; and his desire of her

grew immense, burning, illogical and merciless; crying to him
through all his senses; louder than his hate, stronger than his

fear, deeper than his contempt--irresistible and certain like
death itself.

Standing at a little distance, just within the light--but on the
threshold of that darkness from which she had come--she listened,

one hand still behind her back, the other arm stretched out with
the hand half open as if to catch the fleeting words that rang

around her, passionate, menacing, imploring, but all tinged with
the anguish of his suffering, all hurried by the impatience that

gnawed his breast. And while she listened she felt a slowing
down of her heart-beats as the meaning of his appeal grew clearer

before her indignant eyes, as she saw with rage and pain the
edifice of her love, her own work, crumble slowly to pieces,

destroyed by that man's fears, by that man's falseness. Her
memory recalled the days by the brook when she had listened to

other words--to other thoughts--to promises and to pleadings for
other things, which came from that man's lips at the bidding of

her look or her smile, at the nod of her head, at the whisper of
her lips. Was there then in his heart something else than her

image, other desires than the desires of her love, other fears
than the fear of losing her? How could that be? Had she grown

ugly or old in a moment? She was appalled, surprised and angry
with the anger of unexpectedhumiliation; and her eyes looked

fixedly, sombre and steady, at that man born in the land of
violence and of evil wherefrom nothing but misfortune comes to

those who are not white. Instead of thinking of her caresses,
instead of forgetting all the world in her embrace, he was

thinking yet of his people; of that people that steals every
land, masters every sea, that knows no mercy and no truth--knows

nothing but its own strength. O man of strong arm and of false
heart! Go with him to a far country, be lost in the throng of

cold eyes and false hearts--lose him there! Never! He was
mad--mad with fear; but he should not escape her! She would keep

him here a slave and a master; here where he was alone with her;
where he must live for her--or die. She had a right to his love

which was of her making, to the love that was in him now, while
he spoke those words without sense. She must put between him and

other white men a barrier of hate. He must not only stay, but he
must also keep his promise to Abdulla, the fulfilment of which

would make her safe.
"Aissa, let us go! With you by my side I would attack them with

my naked hands. Or no! Tomorrow we shall be outside, on board
Abdulla's ship. You shall come with me and then I could . . .

If the ship went ashore by some chance, then we could steal a
canoe and escape in the confusion. . . . You are not afraid of

the sea . . . of the sea that would give me freedom . . ."
He was approaching her gradually with extended arms, while he

pleaded ardently in incoherent words that ran over and tripped
each other in the extremeeagerness of his speech. She stepped

back, keeping her distance, her eyes on his face, watching on it
the play of his doubts and of his hopes with a piercing gaze,

that seemed to search out the innermost recesses of his thought;
and it was as if she had drawn slowly the darkness round her,

wrapping herself in its undulating folds that made her indistinct
and vague. He followed her step by step till at last they both

stopped, facing each other under the big tree of the enclosure.
The solitary exile of the forests, great, motionless and solemn