"My mother make me," Loseis said with sad stolidity.
Bela pondered on these matters, filled with a deep excitement. Her mother kneaded the dough.
"I half a white woman," the girl murmured at last, more to herself than the other. "That is why I strange here."
Again her mother looked at her intently, presaging another disclosure. "Me, my father a white man too," she said in her abrupt way. "It is forgotten now."
Bela stared at her mother, breathing quickly.
"Then—I 'most white!" she whispered, with amazed and brightening eyes. "Now I understand my heart!" she suddenly cried aloud. "Always I love the white people, but I not know. Always I ask Musq'oosis tell me what they do. I love them because they live nice. They not pigs like these people. They are my people! All is clear to me!" She rose.
"What you do?" asked Loseis anxiously.
"I will go to my people!" cried Bela, looking away as if she envisaged the whole white race.
The Indian mother raised her eyes in a swift glance of passionate supplication—but her lips were tight. Bela did not see the look.
"I go talk to Musq'oosis," she said. "He tell me all to do."