Again she flung herself at his feet and wept. The sobs hurt him, yet he must not lift her. She begged for a charm––for a spell––for black magic to strike dead the wearer of the red bears and the blue beads, for all wild things a wild passion could suggest.
“If you could see into the other years you would be content to have it as it is,” he said gently––“the years ahead may––”
“I care nothing for the years ahead! I want the now!––I want––”
“Listen!” he said, and she fell silent with covered face. “That which you feel for Ka-yemo is not the love of marriage. A man takes a wife for love of a wife and a home and children in the home. A man does not chain himself to a tigress whose bite and whose blows he has felt. A man would wish to be master:––what man has been born who could be master in your home?”
“You do not know. You have lived a different sort of life! I could be more than another wife––than any other wife! I shall kill some one!––” and she rose to her feet––“unless the magic comes I kill some one!”
“And then?”
“Then Phen-tza the governor will have me 61 strangled, and they will take me to my grave with ropes of raw hide and there will not any where be a sad heart for Yahn Tsyn-deh.”
“You see how it is––he is precious to you––as he always has been. But your love is too great a love for happy days. Always it will bring you the ache in the heart. No thing of earth should be given the love like that:––it is a fire to burn a whole forest in the days of its summer, and in the winter snows there will be only ashes.”
“Good!––then I, Yahn, will rather burn to the ashes in such summer days, and be dead under the snows in the winter of the year!”
“And after that?”