"Have to?"
"Mulveen must have been suspicious. He followed me this morning. He saw. Tonight, he said. Tonight, Wenzi. I had to come after you, Gilbert."
"Tonight? Tonight what?"
"Mulveen saw me at the stream. This is a good way to make a living, Gilbert. Better than the other ways which are open to me. It is clean. It is decent, if degrading. I am a girl, Gilbert."
The news stunned him. A girl on safari—it was unthinkable. A girl, here....
"But don't you have a family? A father or brother to provide for you?"
"No one. And I'm seventeen."
Seventeen. Wenzi, by modern Earth standards gone primitive, was a woman.
Suddenly Gilbert tensed. He had heard something, a slight stirring in the dark swamp. Had Wenzi been followed? Had this whole thing been elaborately planned by Mulveen, planned already in the morning, giving Wenzi a reason to flee so that Wenzi would flee to Gilbert at night and Gilbert would be caught and killed, legitimate quarry now, even before morning came?
Gilbert touched Wenzi's lips with his fingers, hoping she would understand. He took her arm and led her silently from the swamp-trail.