He scarcely knew his own voice, so full of a deep encompassing tenderness and yearning was it:
“Our dream is to be different from others,” he said solemnly. “It will never end. Not for a lifetime, little Tama!”
“It surely goin’ last foraever ad this worl’?” she asked with sceptical wistfulness.
“If you wish it,” said he huskily.
When the sun was dipping down in the west, and but half its red face showed above the shadowy hills of Hakusan, the fox-woman felt the fears seize her in their throttling grip again.
She stood like one under some spell, her back against the trunk of a giant oak, her hair like a veritable aureole above her.
Down in a little ravine, but a few feet from where she stood, the Tojin-san was gathering dried sticks to build their evening fire. She could hear him as he moved from point to point. Sometimes he whistled softly to himself, sometimes hummed vague snatches of song.
Farther away—at a distance beyond her sight, even if she could have seen—she knew, with that intuitive certainty of the blind, that others were passing over their tracks.
Her hand sought her heart, and clung to it, as if to stop its beating. Fear lent sudden wings to her feet, as with a little gasping cry she fled downward to the hollow where the Tojin labored. She was beside him before he had heard or seen her, and now in surprise he looked at her white little face of anguish.