s, hood and
all, revealing herself in all her strange beauty.

I jumped down off the wagon-box and took her hand.

"O Macumazana," she said, while I still held it--or, to be accurate,
while she still held mine--"indeed my heart is glad to see a friend
again," and she looked at me with her appealing eyes, which, in the red
light, I could see appeared to float in tears.

"A friend, Mameena!" I exclaimed. "Why, now you are so rich, and the
wife of a big chief, you must have plenty of friends."

"Alas! Macumazahn, I am rich in nothing except trouble, for my husband
saves, like the ants for winter. Why, he even grudged me this poor
kaross; and as for friends, he is so jealous that he will not allow me
any."

"He cannot be jealous of women, Mameena!"

"Oh, women! Piff! I do not care for women; they are very unkind to me,
because--because--well, perhaps you can guess why, Macumazahn,"
she answered, glancing at her own reflection in a little travelling
looking-glass that hung from the woodwork of the wagon, for I had been
using it to brush my hair, and smiled very sweetly.

"At least you have your husband, Mameena, and I thought that perhaps by
this time--"

She held up her hand.

"My husband! Oh, I would that I had him not, for I hate him, Macumazahn;
and as for the rest--never! The truth is that I never cared for any man
except one whose name _you_ may chance to remember, Macumazahn."

"I suppose you mean Saduko--" I began.

"Tell me, Macumazahn," she inquired innocently, "are white people very
stupid? I ask because you do not seem as clever as you used to be. Or
have you perhaps a bad memory?"

Now I felt myself turning red as the sky behind me, and broke in
hurriedly:

"If you did not like your husband, Mameena, you should not have married
him. You know you need not unless you wished."

"When one has only two thorn bushes to sit on, Macumazahn, one chooses
that which seems to have the fewest prickles, to discover sometimes that
they are still there in hundreds, although one did not see them. You
know that at length everyone gets tired of standing."

"Is that why you have taken to walking, Mameena? I mean, what are you
doing here alone?"

"I? Oh, I heard that you were passing this way, and came to have a talk
with you. No, from you I cannot hide even the least bit of the truth. I
came to talk with you, but also I came to see Zikali and ask him what a
wife should do who hates her husband."

"Indeed! And