As she gazed at the cluster of native huts, suddenly her mind whirled with amazement. The mat at the door of one of the huts was lifted and her husband came out. He looked about him a moment a little uncertainly, and then strode off, disappearing into the jungle.
Stella could feel her heart beating. She turned to Tsuda to see if he had shared her observation. It was apparent, from his involved look, that he, too, had seen the White Kami come out of the hut.
Her mind, so edged with suffering, leapt instantly to a suspicion which, even after all that she had endured, was potent enough to fill her with an immense revulsion. At first she thought she would say nothing at all, but presently she asked: “Tsuda, whose hut is that my husband just left?”
Tsuda looked humble and reluctant. “The way of the gods....” he murmuringly began.
But she interrupted him in a dry, rather sharp voice. “Let’s never mind about all that, Tsuda. Just tell me whose house it is.”
Tsuda at first was silent. He made a little awkward motion of appeal toward her with his bony brown hands. But he saw that he must not evade (clever Tsuda) so in a moment he told her the truth in a reticent mutter—perhaps just too reticent to be convincing. The truth he had brought her up here to, if possible, behold.
“It is the house of the great chief’s Small Wife.”
“Yes,” murmured Stella. A plain dull monosyllable. There was nothing more to be said. Still, after a little, she asked, in a voice almost completely strained free of any emotion: “Does he go there often, Tsuda?”
And Tsuda answered in the affirmative—that is to say, he answered after his own devious fashion, slowly inclining his head, but quickly raising it to fix his restless bright eyes upon her face: “It is written—gn—we must trust the gods in all things, Wife-of-the-Kami.”