She was not only face to face with a big, implacable problem but with a very painful and sordid struggle for existence.
"No, I could not go back," she repeated. "Whatever happens I will never again be like them. They make me shudder. I have no people, no kindred, no country. I am an outcast. Sometimes I get frightened. I seem to be just an empty shadow. I feel dead, but I still walk about. I can't even lie down under the ground and rest like my parents who are gone. I don't know why I tell you all this. You are a white man. You cannot understand."
"Wah-na-gi, I understand. I understand even what you haven't said. I'm glad you told me all this, but I knew it before you told me." And he smiled at her tenderly and she smiled back at him through her tears.
"You are very wonderful," she said with divine candor, and he laughed joyously, because he knew she was incapable of sarcasm.
"No Wah-na-gi, I'm not wonderful. I'm a very ordinary chap. It would be strange if I didn't understand. My mother, too, was an Indian woman."
He thought she would be startled, and he watched her narrowly for a sign. Would she be disappointed? Would her hero crumble? Or would she be glad that they were closer to each other than she had dreamed?
"Your mother?" she said. She did not grasp it. She hadn't thought to speculate about him; to wonder who he was or where he came from or why he was there.
"Your mother! Did you say your mother was an——"
"An Indian woman. Nat-u-ritch was her name.
"Nat-u-ritch? No, it isn't possible. The pretty little woman—they say she was so pretty—who, who——"