"I shan't eat you," he repeated. Nature had been pressing him to experiment. He had got so far as to finger his knife.
"Why?" she asked stupidly, thinking aloud. One of her Little Moon braves in similar circumstances would have regarded the tumble of an enemy-woman as a sheer food-gift from the God of the Hills.
"Sun-Men don't eat girls," he was saying. "Now you are well again, what will you do?"
"I—don't—know," said Dêh-Yān. He was not only very—very beautiful, but incredibly gentle; wholly, quite absolutely different from the young braves of her clan who had been making eyes at her, and whom the old chief had warned off, Pong-Gu, Low-Mah and Gow-Loo, rough boastful fellows whom she had known and played with as boys on an equality, but who, since their midnight initiations had seen fit to treat her as the dirt under their noble masculine feet.
"Run away, now, if you feel strong again," said the man quite gently, and seemed to mean it. "Run and fetch your braves. I am tired of sitting here." (He looked dead tired, and oh, so thin!) "They will take my scalp and eat me. You Little Moons are not nice feeders."
"They will roast you first, alive!" said Dêh-Yān very low, and covered her mouth with her hand; the unpleasantness of the practice coming home to her for the first time.
"Yes, I know ... 'tis my risk.... I took it.... But, unless they come quickly I shall be—dead first."
His words came slowly. He leaned back and—fainted.
Dêh-Yān looked him over as he lay and was conscious that new, and strangely pleasant, and unnamed feelings were moving within her. She no longer feared this man; he had given her a horrid fright, but that was over, and had left no after effects—savages are insensible to what doctors call shock. Nor did she hate him as she had thought she hated all Sun-Disc men, and had been prepared to hate this one until he had turned his face up to her and spoken gently.