“TOUCH HER NOT, BELOVED SENSEI!
SHE IS ACCURSED, UNCLEAN!”
He put the boy roughly, savagely aside, and in a moment was kneeling above her. It was the task of a minute to cut free the bonds that bound her. Still she did not move. With hands that trembled in spite of themselves, gently, softly, he put back from her face the glittering veil of her hair, and as he did so his heart came up in his throat in a great, suffocating bound—for the face he uncovered was that of a white woman!
So perfect, so exquisite the small, sensitive face, he could only gaze upon it spell-bound. The great purple eyes, wide open, and shadowed with their long, gilded lashes; the thin little nose; the lips red as a new blown rose, and as sweet!—and crowning it all, the golden glory of her hair.
In this land where only the brown face and densely black hair and eyes had been known for centuries, was it strange that this creature of the mountains seemed as of another world—a sprite indeed. This persecuted, hunted creature, whom they had trapped with ropes, as the hunter does the wild animals of the forests; this fragile, trembling, quivering little child—of his own skin and blood—this was the fox-woman!
She spoke not at all, though her wide-open eyes never moved from the Tojin’s face. Something in their glassy stare, their curious look as of a mist before them, brought an exclamation to his lips. He bent nearer to her, looked deeply, keenly into those unflickering eyes, and an imprecation swept his lips.
“And blind! My God!” he cried.
As if his voice had moved her spirit into a sudden life, the fox-woman stirred soundlessly as a cat would have done. Suddenly she leaped blindly in the face of the Tojin. He stood unmoving, a great stolid wall against which she might hurl her puny strength in vain.
Presently, gasping, exhausted, she drew backward, her fluttering hands crushed upon her heart as if to stop its frantic beating. A sound that had the vaguest, most piteous of human notes came from the fox-woman’s lips, and suddenly, with the motion of a lost child in despair, she buried her face in the fragile shelter of her hands.
