really talking with them, then?" cried the Hon. Morison.
"You understood them and they understood you?"

"Certainly."

"But they are hideous creatures--degraded beasts of a lower order. How
could you speak the language of beasts?"

"They are not hideous, and they are not degraded," replied Meriem.
"Friends are never that. I lived among them for years before Bwana
found me and brought me here. I scarce knew any other tongue than that
of the mangani. Should I refuse to know them now simply because I
happen, for the present, to live among humans?"

"For the present!" ejaculated the Hon. Morison. "You cannot mean that
you expect to return to live among them? Come, come, what foolishness
are we talking! The very idea! You are spoofing me, Miss Meriem. You
have been kind to these baboons here and they know you and do not
molest you; but that you once lived among them--no, that is
preposterous."

"But I did, though," insisted the girl, seeing the real horror that the
man felt in the presence of such an idea reflected in his tone and
manner, and rather enjoying baiting him still further. "Yes, I lived,
almost naked, among the great apes and the lesser apes. I dwelt among
the branches of the trees. I pounced upon the smaller prey and
devoured it--raw. With Korak and A'ht I hunted the antelope and the
boar, and I sat upon a tree limb and made faces at Numa, the lion, and
threw sticks at him and annoyed him until he roared so terribly in his
rage that the earth shook.

"And Korak built me a lair high among the branches of a mighty tree.
He brought me fruits and flesh. He fought for me and was kind to
me--until I came to Bwana and My Dear I do not recall that any other
than Korak was ever kind to me." There was a wistful note in the
girl's voice now and she had forgotten that she was bantering the Hon.
Morison. She was thinking of Korak. She had not thought of him a
great deal of late.

For a time both were silently absorbed in their own reflections as they
rode on toward the bungalow of their host. The girl was thinking of a
god-like figure, a leopard skin half concealing his smooth, brown hide
as he leaped nimbly through the trees to lay an offering of food before
her on his return from a successful hunt. Behind him, shaggy and
powerful, swung a huge anthropoid ape, while she, Meriem, laughing and
shouting her welcome, swung upon a swaying limb before the entrance to
her sylvan bower. It was a pretty