"I would like," he said, "to make a clay of that woman."
"Eh!" The Kafir suppressed his smile. "Time enough, Paul. Plenty of time and plenty of clay for you to do that—and plenty of women, too."
Paul was on his feet by now, looking down at the other two.
"But," he hesitated, "I must make it," he said. "I must."
The Kafir nodded. "All right," he said. "You make it, Paul, and show it to me. As you see her, you know; that 's how you must do it."
"Yes," said Paul seriously. "Brave and smiling and dying. I know!"
The gourd-drum throbbed insistently. He moved towards it reluctantly. "Good night," he said.
"Goodnight, Paul!"
A moment later he was vague in the growing dusk, and they heard his long whistle of answer to the drum.
Margaret, with her chin propped on her hand, sat on the slope of the wall. The Kafir began to put away the clay on which he had been working. Paul's store was an abandoned ant-bear's hole across which there trailed the broad dry leaves of a tenacious gourd. He put the unfinished head carefully in this receptacle, and then drew from it another object, which he held out to the girl.