messenger--" Thus much had I spoken when the frail thing loosened
its hold to fall without a flutter, straight and swift, into the

white blaze beneath. I sprang forward with a shriek and stood
staring into the fire, my whole frame trembling with a sudden

terrible motion" target="_blank" title="n.感情；情绪；激动">emotion. Even thus had Rima fallen--fallen from the
great height- -into the flames that instantly consumed her

beautiful flesh and bright spirit! O cruel Nature!
A moth that perished in the flame; an indistinct faint sound; a

dream in the night; the semblance of a shadowy form moving
mist-like in the twilight gloom of the forest, would suddenly

bring back a vivid memory, the old anguish, to break for a while
the calm of that period. It was calm then after the storm.

Nevertheless, my health deteriorated. I ate little and slept
little and grew thin and weak. When I looked down on the dark,

glassy forest pool, where Rima would look no more to see herself
so much better than in the small mirror of her lover's pupil, it

showed me a gaunt, ragged man with a tangled mass of black hair
falling over his shoulders, the bones of his face showing through

the dead-looking, sun-parched skin, the sunken eyes with a gleam
in them that was like insanity.

To see this reflection had a strangely disturbing effect on me.
A torturing voice would whisper in my ear: "Yes, you are

evidently going mad. By and by you will rush howling through the
forest, only to drop down at last and die; and no person will

ever find and bury your bones. Old Nuflo was more fortunate in
that he perished first."

"A lying voice!" I retorted in sudden anger. "My faculties were
never keener than now. Not a fruit can ripen but I find it. If

a small bird darts by with a feather or straw in its bill I mark
its flight, and it will be a lucky bird if I do not find its nest

in the end. Could a savage born in the forest do more? He would
starve where I find food!"

"Ay, yes, there is nothing wonderful in that," answered the
voice. "The stranger from a cold country suffers less from the

heat, when days are hottest, than the Indian who knows no other
climate. But mark the result! The stranger dies, while the

Indian, sweating and gasping for breath, survives. In like
manner the low-minded savage, cut off from all human fellowship,

keeps his faculties to the end, while your finer brain proves
your ruin."

I cut from a tree a score of long, blunt thorns, tough and black
as whalebone, and drove them through a strip of wood in which I

had burnt a row of holes to receive them, and made myself a comb,
and combed out my long, tangled hair to improve my appearance.

"It is not the tangled condition of your hair," persisted the
voice, "but your eyes, so wild and strange in their expression,

that show the approach of madness. Make your locks as smooth as
you like, and add a garland of those scarlet, star-shaped

blossoms hanging from the bush behind you--crown yourself as you
crowned old Cla-cla--but the crazed look will remain just the

same."
And being no longer able to reply, rage and desperation drove me

to an act which only seemed to prove that the hateful voice had
prophesied truly. Taking up a stone, I hurled it down on the

water to shatter the image I saw there, as if it had been no
faithful reflection of myself, but a travesty, cunningly made of

enamelled clay or some other material, and put there by some
malicious enemy to mock me.

CHAPTER XXI
Many days had passed since the hut was made--how many may not be

known, since I notched no stick and knotted no cord--yet never in
my rambles in the wood had I seen that desolate ash-heap where

the fire had done its work. Nor had I looked for it. On the
contrary, my wish was never to see it, and the fear of coming

accidentally upon it made me keep to the old familiar paths. But
at length, one night, without thinking of Rima's fearful end, it

all at once occurred to me that the hated savage whose blood I
had shed on the white savannah might have only been practicing

his natural deceit when he told me that most pitiful story. If
that were so--if he had been prepared with a fictitious account

of her death to meet my questions--then Rima might still exist:
lost, perhaps, wandering in some distant place, exposed to perils

day and night, and unable to find her way back, but living still!
Living! her heart on fire with the hope of reunion with me,

cautiously threading her way through the undergrowth of
immeasurable forests; spying out the distant villages and hiding

herself from the sight of all men, as she knew so well how to
hide; studying the outlines of distant mountains, to recognize

some familiar landmark at last, and so find her way back to the
old wood once more! Even now, while I sat there idly musing, she

might be somewhere in the wood--somewhere near me; but after so
long an absence full of apprehension, waiting in concealment for

what tomorrow's light might show.
I started up and replenished the fire with trembling hands, then

set the door open to let the welcoming stream out into the wood.
But Rima had done more; going out into the black forest in the

pitiless storm, she had found and led me home. Could I do less!
I was quickly out in the shadows of the wood. Surely it was more

than a mere hope that made my heart beat so wildly! How could a
sensation so strangely sudden, so irresistible in its power,

possess me unless she were living and near? Can it be, can it be
that we shall meet again? To look again into your divine

eyes--to hold you again in my arms at last! I so changed--so
different! But the old love remains; and of all that has happened

in your absence I shall tell you nothing--not one word; all shall
be forgotten now--sufferings, madness, crime, remorse! Nothing

shall ever vex you again--not Nuflo, who vexed you every day; for
he is dead now--murdered, only I shall not say that--and I have

decently buried his poor old sinful bones. We alone together in
the wood--OUR wood now! The sweet old days again; for I know

that you would not have it different, nor would I.
Thus I talked to myself, mad with the thoughts of the joy that

would soon be mine; and at intervals I stood still and made the
forest echo with my calls. "Rima! Rima!" I called again and

again, and waited for some response; and heard only the familiar
night-sounds--voices of insect and bird and tinkling tree-frog,

and a low murmur in the topmost foliage, moved by some light
breath of wind unfelt below. I was drenched with dew, bruised

and bleeding from falls in the dark, and from rocks and thorns
and rough branches, but had felt nothing; gradually the

excitement burnt itself out; I was hoarse with shouting and ready
to drop down with fatigue, and hope was dead: and at length I

crept back to my hut, to cast myself on my grass bed and sink
into a dull, miserable, desponding stupor.

But on the following morning I was out once more, determined to
search the forest well; since, if no evidence of the great fire

Kua-ko had described to me existed, it would still be possible to
believe that he had lied to me, and that Rima lived. I searched

all day and found nothing; but the area was large, and to search
it thoroughly would require several days.

On the third day I discovered the fatal spot, and knew that never
again would I behold Rima in the flesh, that my last hope had

indeed been a vain one. There could be no mistake: just such an
open place as the Indian had pictured to me was here, with giant

trees standing apart; while one tree stood killed and blackened
by fire, surrounded by a huge heap, sixty or seventy yards

across, of prostrate charred tree-trunks and ashes. Here and
there slender plants had sprung up through the ashes, and the

omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw their
pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long

at the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less
than fifty feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top