“Are they very beautiful? They must be.”
“I do not know,” he whispered, thoughtfully. “And if I ever did know, looking at you I have forgotten.”
“Forgotten! And for three days and two nights you have forgotten me also! Why? Why were you angry with me when I spoke at first of Tuan Abdulla, in the days when we lived beside the brook? You remembered somebody then. Somebody in the land whence you come. Your tongue is false. You are white indeed, and your heart is full of deception. I know it. And yet I cannot help believing you when you talk of your love for me. But I am afraid!”
He felt flattered and annoyed by her vehemence, and said—
“Well, I am with you now. I did come back. And it was you that went away.”
“When you have helped Abdulla against the Rajah Laut, who is the first of white men, I shall not be afraid any more,” she whispered.
“You must believe what I say when I tell you that there never was another woman; that there is nothing for me to regret, and nothing but my enemies to remember.”
“Where do you come from?” she said, impulsive and inconsequent, in a passionate whisper. “What is that land beyond the great sea from which you come? A land of lies and of evil from which nothing but misfortune ever comes to us—who are not white. Did you not at first ask me to go there with you? That is why I went away.”
“I shall never ask you again.”
“And there is no woman waiting for you there?”