“Who taught you my language?” I asked, astonished.
“Bastin and Bickley, while you ill, they teach; they teach me much. Man just same now as he was hundred thousand years ago,” she added enigmatically. “All think one woman beautiful when no other woman there.”
“Indeed,” I replied, wondering to what proceedings on the part of Bastin and Bickley she alluded. Could that self-centred pair—oh! it was impossible.
“How long have I been ill?” I asked to escape the subject which I felt to be uncomfortable.
She lifted her beautiful eyes in search of words and began to count upon her fingers.
“Two moon, one half moon, yes, ten week, counting Sabbath,” she answered triumphantly.
“Ten weeks!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, Humphrey, ten whole weeks and three days you first bad, then mad. Oh!” she went on, breaking into the Orofenan tongue which she spoke so perfectly, although it was not her own. That language of hers I never learned, but I know she thought in it and only translated into Orofenan, because of the great difficulty which she had in rendering her high and refined ideas into its simpler metaphor, and the strange words which often she introduced. “Oh! you have been very ill, friend of my heart. At times I thought that you were going to die, and wept and wept. Bickley thinks that he saved you and he is very clever. But he could not have saved you; that wanted more knowledge than any of your people have; only I pray you, do not tell him so because it would hurt his pride.”
“What was the matter with me then, Yva?”
“All was the matter. First, the weapon which that youth threw—he was the son of the sorcerer whom my father destroyed—crushed in the bone of your head. He is dead for his crime and may he be accursed for ever,” she added in the only outbreak of rage and vindictiveness in which I ever saw her indulge.