"Let us not speak of that—yet," Koyala dissented. "Tell me, Mynheer Gross, do you love my country?"
"It is a wonderfully beautiful country," Peter Gross replied enthusiastically, falling in with her mood. "A country of infinite possibilities. We can make it the garden spot of the world. Never have I seen such fertile soil as there is in the river bottom below us. All it needs is time and labor—and men with vision."
Koyala rose to a sitting posture and leaned on one hand. With deft motion of the other she made an ineffectual effort to cover her nut-brown limbs, cuddled among the ferns and grasses, with the shortened kabaya. Very nymphlike she looked, a Diana of the jungle, and it was small wonder that Peter Gross, the indifferent to woman, gave her his serious attention while she glanced pensively down the forest aisles.
"Men with vision!" she sighed presently. "That is what we have always needed. That is what we have always lacked. My unhappy people! Ignorant, and none to teach them, none to guide them into the better way. Leaders have come, have stayed a little while, and then they have gone again. Brooke helped us in Sarawak—now only his memory is left." A pause. "I suppose you will be going back to Java soon again, mynheer?"
"Not until my work is completed," Peter Gross assured gravely.
"But that will be soon. You will crush your enemies. You will organize the districts and lighten our burdens for a while. Then you will go. A new resident will come. Things will slip back into the old rut. Our young men are hot-headed, there will be feuds, wars, piracy. There are turns in the wheel, but no progress for us, mynheer. Borneo!" Her voice broke with a sob, and she stole a covert glance at him.
"By heaven, I swear that will not happen, Koyala," Peter Gross asserted vehemently. "I shall not go away, I shall stay here. The governor owes me some reward, the least he can give me is to let me finish the work I have begun. I shall dedicate my life to Bulungan—we, Koyala, shall redeem her, we two."
Koyala shook her head. Her big, sorrowful eyes gleamed on him for a moment through tears.
"So you speak to-day when you are full of enthusiasm, mynheer. But when one or two years have passed, and you hear naught but the unending tales of tribal jealousies, and quarrels over buffaloes, and complaints about the tax, and falsehood upon falsehood, then your ambition will fade and you will seek a place to rest, far from Borneo."
The gentle sadness of her tear-dimmed eyes, the melancholy cadences of her voice sighing tribulation like an October wind among the maples, and her eloquent beauty, set Peter Gross's pulses on fire.