“You are—you are the Star Woman?” murmured Crawford. “Impossible! Perrot said——”
“Perrot—Metaminens!” For an instant her face softened, became radiant and glorious; a sudden deep eagerness leaped in her eyes, an eagerness not untouched by pain. Then again she regarded him with that cool and aloof gaze. “How does he look? He is old?”
“Some men never grow old.” Crawford was confused, staggered by all this. Surely this was not the woman Perrot had seen thirty years ago! He stood silent, wondering.
“What is your errand here?” she asked quietly. “I have talked with your friend Frontin, I know how you tricked Standing Bull into delivering my message to the wrong man, I know with what obstinate pertinacity you have fought across the wilderness to reach me—but why?”
“To see you,” said Crawford, and under her steady gaze, words failed him for an instant. Then he rallied. “That is to say——”
“You are a hard man,” she said, ignoring his stammer. “I quite understand why you have fled into this land from your own people. I know what you seek—and you will not find it. There is no peace over the horizon. Listen!” She held up one hand. Crawford, listening, heard the sound of distant gun-shots, saw swift distress flit into her face. “They are killing my friends the animals,” she said in a mournful tone. “This has been a sanctuary for man and beast alike, until now; those Stone Men are murdering my friends. And are you better than they? There is no love in your heart, for I can see into it—I have seen into it while you lay sick and muttering. You do not love your country, your fellow-men—anything! Have you ever loved, indeed? Have you any capacity for love? Or are you, too, one of the Stone Men?”
Crawford was taken terribly aback. Here, in the presence of this woman, he was suddenly speechless—he, who had dared call a king a poltroon to his very face!
He had never looked forward to his actual meeting with the Star Woman; he had left that to the future. Now he found himself indescribably impressed by the quiet poise, the splendid personality of this girl, who was hardly yet a woman. Her age, he guessed, could not be much more than twenty—within a few years of it, at least.
He found himself strangely moved. It was as though she had some power which broke down all his hard shell of materialism, touching the very spirit within him. He suddenly understood why she was a person reverenced by all the red tribes. He felt that a touch of her hand would be a benison. Yet that final question of hers went straight down into the depths of his soul with its hurt, and the pipe fell unheeded from his hand. Once he had loved, indeed, and had seen his young wife stricken down by a bullet from Dutch William’s troopers. And he had loved Phelim Burke——
“I am what God and man have made me,” he said, but the proud words faltered. Upon that, as he met her intent gaze, his face changed; the harshly masterful lines of it softened, and a swift glitter of tears stood in his blue eyes. And she, seeing these things, was startled. “You,” he went on softly, “you who ask—what then do you know of love?”