"Yes," she said. "That was—funny."
Odd! It made her vaguely restive to hear the Kafir make play with the shortcomings of the white man. It touched a fund of compunction whose existence she had not suspected. Something racial in her composition, something partizan and unreasoning, lifted its obliterated head from the grave in which her training and the conscious leanings of her mind had buried it.
He had no thoughts of what it was that kept her from returning his smile. He imagined that his mission, his loneliness and his danger had touched her and made her grave.
"Well, you see how it all came about?" he went on. "It isn't really so extraordinary, is it? And I 'm not discouraged, Miss Harding. I shall find a way, sooner or later; they 're bound to get used to me in the end. In the meantime, Paul is teaching me Kafir, and there 's you. You make up to me for a lot."
"Do I?" Margaret roused herself and sat up, deliberately thrusting down out of her consciousness that instinctive element which bade her do injustice and withhold from the man before her his due of acknowledgment.
"Do I?" she said. "I 'd be glad if that were so."
He made to speak but stopped at her gesture.
"No," she said. "I would be glad. It 's a wonderfully great thing you 've started to do, and you 're lucky to have it. You feel that, don't you?"
"Yes," he said thoughtfully. "Oh, yes."
She eyed him with a moment's hesitation, for he had not agreed with any alacrity, and a martyr who regards his stake with aversion is always disappointing.