f in dead secrecy. And at the fifth week, just as with the
native who had died, she heard that Walderhurst was ill. During the next
four weeks she was sick with the tension of combined horror and delight.
But he did not die in the tenth week. They heard that he had gone to
Tangiers with a party of notable people, and that his "slight"
indisposition had passed, leaving him in admirable health and spirits.

Her husband had known nothing of her frenzy. She would not have dared to
tell him. There were many things she did not tell him. He used to laugh
at her native stories of occult powers, though she knew that he had seen
some strange things done, as most foreigners had. He always explained
such things contemptuously on grounds which presupposed in the
performers of the mysteries powers of agility, dexterity, and universal
knowledge quite as marvellous as anything occult could have been. He did
not like her to show belief in the "tricks of the natives," as he called
them. It made a woman look a fool, he said, to be so credulous.

During the last few months a new fever had tormented her. Feelings had
awakened in her which were new. She thought things she had never thought
before. She had never cared for children or suspected herself of being
the maternal woman. But Nature worked in her after her weird fashion.
She began to care less for some things and more for others. She cared
less for Osborn's moods and was better able to defy them. He began to be
afraid of her temper, and she began to like at times to defy his. There
had been some fierce scenes between them in which he had found her meet
with a flare of fury words she would once have been cowed by. He had
spoken one day with the coarse slightingness of a selfish, irritable
brute, of the domestic event which was before them. He did not speak
twice.

She sprang up before him and shook her clenched fist in his face, so
near that he started back.

"Don't say a word!" she cried. "Don't dare--don't dare. I tell you--look
out, if you don't want to be killed."

During the outpouring of her frenzy he saw her in an entirely new light
and made discoveries. She would fight for her young, as a tigress fights
for hers. She was nursing a passion of secret feeling of which he had
known nothing. He had not for a moment suspected her of it. She had not
seemed that kind of girl. She had been of the kind that cares for finery
and social importance and the world's favour, not for sentim