n in
his mind. Doubtless she hated and loathed him as he hated and loathed
himself when he let his mind dwell upon it. He had lost her. No more
surely had she been lost when he thought her dead than she was in
reality now that he had seen her living--living in the guise of a
refinement that had transfigured and sanctified her.

He had loved her before, now he worshipped her. He knew that he might
never possess her now, but at least he might see her. From a distance
he might look upon her. Perhaps he might serve her; but never must she
guess that he had found her or that he lived.

He wondered if she ever thought of him--if the happy days that they had
spent together never recurred to her mind. It seemed unbelievable that
such could be the case, and yet, too, it seemed almost equally
unbelievable that this beautiful girl was the same disheveled, half
naked, little sprite who skipped nimbly among the branches of the trees
as they ran and played in the lazy, happy days of the past. It could
not be that her memory held more of the past than did her new
appearance.

It was a sad Korak who ranged the jungle near the plain's edge waiting
for the coming of his Meriem--the Meriem who never came.

But there came another--a tall, broad-shouldered man in khaki at the
head of a swarthy crew of ebon warriors. The man's face was set in
hard, stern lines and the marks of sorrow were writ deep about his
mouth and eyes--so deep that the set expression of rage upon his
features could not obliterate them.

Korak saw the man pass beneath him where he hid in the great tree that
had harbored him before upon the edge of that fateful little clearing.
He saw him come and he set rigid and frozen and suffering above him.
He saw him search the ground with his keen eyes, and he only sat there
watching with eyes that glazed from the intensity of his gaze. He saw
him sign to his men that he had come upon that which he sought and he
saw him pass out of sight toward the north, and still Korak sat like a
graven image, with a heart that bled in dumb misery. An hour later
Korak moved slowly away, back into the jungle toward the west. He went
listlessly, with bent head and stooped shoulders, like an old man who
bore upon his back the weight of a great sorrow.

Baynes, following his black guide, battled his way through the dense
underbrush, riding stooped low over his horse's neck, or often he
dismounted where the low branches swept too cl