“Perhaps,” I returned. “Yet Lentala, the savage, appears in her independence to have solved some latter-day feminine problems. I hope you will meet her soon. Then you and she can formulate a code for your sex. We are going to see Captain Mason in order to secure his consent to your meeting her brother. So you must exercise your subtlest graces on our president.”
“I—I’m afraid of him,” she declared in some trepidation.
“Why?”
“Because he is stern and silent and cold and——”
“That is all on the surface. His sea-training has given it to him. Underneath he has a woman’s gentleness and kindness. Trust him. Look for the best in him and ignore the rest. Just now he is worried and needs all the sunshine that you know so well how to give.”
She smiled her thanks, but there was concern in her question:
“Worried! Has anything special happened?”
“Was anything special needed? His responsibilities are great.”
Annabel was silent,—not daring, I know, to ask more questions. She had unfolded to my comprehension what the women of our party had been suffering patiently and silently during the dreary weeks that they had been held in prison. Annabel must have borne more than any other; yet she had held up her heart and her head. Dread must have sat on her pillow through many a long hour of the night, but her soul walked forth with the sunrise.
Christopher was sitting on a bench outside the hut.