e boat, alone, except for the rowers.

Possibly Juanna had contrived that it should be so, for as a general
rule, in pursuit of his policy of avoiding a disagreeable young person,
Leonard travelled with Otter in the first boat, while Juanna was
accompanied by Francisco and Soa in the second. To the priest, indeed,
she made herself very agreeable, perhaps to show Leonard how charming
she could be when she chose. She conversed with him by the hour together
as though he were a woman friend, and his melancholy eyes would lighten
with pleasure at her talk. Indeed Francisco had something of the
feminine in his nature; his very gentleness was womanly, and his slight
stature, delicate hands and features heightened this impression. In face
he was not unlike Juanna herself, and as time went on the resemblance
seemed to grow. Had he been arrayed in a woman's loose attire, it would
have been easy to mistake one for the other in the dusk, although she
was the taller of the two.

The accident of his profession caused Juanna to admit Francisco to an
intimacy which she would have withheld from any other man. She forgot,
or did not understand, that she was playing a dangerous game--that after
all he was a man, and that the heart of a man beat beneath his cassock.
Nobody could be more charming in her manner or more subtle in her mind
than Juanna, yet day by day she did not hesitate to display all her
strength before the unfortunate young priest, which, in addition to
her beauty, made her somewhat irresistible, at any rate on the Zambesi.
Friendship and ignorance of the world were doubtless at the bottom of
this reprehensible conduct, but it is also possible that unconscious
pique had something to do with it. She was determined to show Leonard
that she was not always a disagreeable person whom it was well to avoid,
or at least that others did not think so. That all these airs and graces
might have a tragic effect upon Francisco never occurred to her till too
late.

Well, for once the order of things was changed; Leonard and Juanna sat
side by side in the first boat. The evening was lovely, they glided
slowly by the reed-fringed bank, watching the long lights play upon the
surface of the lonely river, listening to the whistling wings of the
countless wildfowl overhead, and counting the herds of various game that
roamed upon the plains beyond.

For a while neither of them spoke much. Occasionally Juanna would
call her companion's attent