"I----?"
"You! You have treated me with scorn, with contempt, like a little child, as though I did not exist! You have--what-you-call--ridden over--overridden what I propose, what I try to do. You and your lordly way! You are not a man--you are a fish of cold blood; a statue of iron! You have nothing but the head! You 'know nothing whatever about vegetables'--nor women! Bah! Shall I read your labels and give you your sight? Ah, no! ah, non!"
Kingozi was stunned. Idly his hand slid forward across the table. It encountered and closed upon her wrist. Instantly she struggled to be free, whereupon mechanically he tightened his clasp. She made a desperate effort to do something. His other hand sought hers. It grasped one of the three bottles, and even as he determined this fact, she tried again to hurl it to the ground. Frustrated, she relaxed her grip, and he released her.
He could hear the fling of her body as she stood upright; could catch the indrawing of her breath.
"Read them for yourself!" was her parting shot as she withdrew.
Kingozi sat very still for a long time. Then he arose abruptly and commanded Cazi Moto to return with him to his own camp. There he caused his chair to be placed in the shade.
"Cazi Moto," said he, "listen well. You are my other hands; now you must be something else. I am sick in the eyes; I can see nothing. In one of these bottles is the medicine that will cure me, and in one of them is the medicine that will make me blind forever. I do not know which it is; and I cannot read the barua because I cannot see it. And Bibi-ya-chui cannot read it. So you must be my eyes. Take a stick, and make on the ground marks exactly like those on the barua. Make them deep, so that I may feel them with my hands."
Cazi Moto sharpened a stick, smoothed out a piece of earth, and squatted beside it.