“Powhatan will not hurt Nantiquas’s wife. To save Owaissa, she will be Nantiquas’s wife, and love him.”
The voice was clear and decided, that answered:—
“O Nantiquas, you are so good to want to save me, but I could not be saved that way; I could never be your wife, Nantiquas. I would do anything else in the world that I could for you.”
After a long silence, Nantiquas replied, “Then Owaissa will sooner die than be the wife of Nantiquas? He cannot save her.”
“No, Nantiquas,” she said firmly and clearly; “no; I can never be your wife.”
He said not a word, but passed out of the wigwam into the twilight. Cleopatra tried to coax Virginia to eat. Iosco lay concealed at the back of the wigwam, and wondered why Owaissa had refused Nantiquas, till the darkness crept up and the moon rose, and the stars came out to keep their mother moon company. The hours slipped by, those last hours, as it seemed, of Owaissa’s life. Iosco asked himself over and over again, should he go to her or not?