her mother's side at the
loom, or sat outside in the sand, picking the flossy burs from the
betel-nuts, watching the flickering shadows that every breeze in the
leaves above scattered in prodigal wastefulness about and over her.

She told herself over and over, as she followed with dreamy eyes the
vain endeavors of a chameleon to change his color, as the shadows
painted the sand beneath him first green and then white, that her own
hopes and strivings were just as futile; and yet when Noa would sit
beside her and try to take her hand, she would fly into a passion,
and run sobbing up the ladder of her home. Noa became moody in
turn. His father saw it and his mates chaffed him, but no one guessed
the cause. That it should be for the sake of a woman would have been
beyond belief; for did not the Koran say, "If thy wife displease thee,
beat her until she see the sin of her ways"? One day, as he thought,
it occurred to him, "She does not want to marry me!" and he asked her,
as though it made any difference. There were tears in her eyes, but
she only threw back her head and laughed, and replied as she should:--

"That is no concern of ours. Is your father, the captain, displeased
with my father's, the punghulo's, dowry?"

And yet Noa felt that Anak knew what he would have said.

He went away angry, but with a gnawing at his heart that frightened
him,--a strange, new sickness, that seemed to drive him from despair
to a longing for revenge, with the coming and going of each quick
breath. He had been trying to make love in a blind, stumbling way;
he did not know it,--why should he? Marriage was but a bargain in
Malaya. But Anak with her finer instincts felt it, and instead of
fanning this tiny, unknown spark, she was driving it into other and
baser channels.

In spite of her better nature she was slowly making a demon out of a
lover,--a lover to whom but a few months before she would have given
freely all her love for a smile or the lightest of compliments.

From that day until the day of the marriage she never spoke to her
lover save in the presence of her elders,--for such was the law of
her race.

She submitted to the tire-women who were to prepare her for the
ceremony, uttering no protest as they filed off her beautiful white
teeth and blackened them with lime, nor when they painted the palms of
her hands and the nails of her fingers and toes red with henna. She
showed no interest in the arranging of her glossy black