“Oh,” they cried, as they, too, hurried towards the travelers.
Mrs. Graham threw herself into her husband’s arms, Nellie fell on Harry’s shoulder, and Enola? Well, she seemed for a moment to be puzzled, but then walked up very gracefully and placed both hands in Onrai’s. Onrai, however, was not satisfied with this and pulling Enola toward him, he threw his great arms about her and pressed her to his heart.
“Are you glad to see me back again, Enola?” said he.
“Why, certainly, Onrai,” said Enola, as soon as she could extricate herself from his arms, “more than glad, for we thought you were lost.”
“We were,” answered Onrai, “and the thought of perishing without again seeing you, nearly drove me mad.”
“But did it not grieve you, too, to think that you would not again see your own people?” asked Enola, trying to call the conversation from herself.
“Yes,” said Onrai, “but it was a different grief. My religion has taught me to expect that I will meet my people again in the next world, and this softened the pain caused by parting from them. But you,” and here Onrai again clasped her in his arms, “I have just found you and learned to love you, with all that love, which has been kept locked in my heart for years waiting for you to come and break the locks which held it captive. It seemed my life had only commenced when I met you, Enola, and the thought that, at the very beginning of our happiness, I was to be taken from you forever, was maddening; and you, Enola, did you not grieve when you thought I was lost?” and Onrai asked this with all the simplicity of a child.
“Yes, Onrai,” answered Enola, “I grieved for all of you.”
“We found a strange people, Enola,” said Mr. Bruce, “but their attractiveness lay only in their strangeness.”
“What did you say, Mr. Bruce?” asked Enola, “a strange people in the bowels of the earth? It is hard for me to believe this. Are you not jesting?” and Enola seemed incredulous.