time in
your life? No. How can a man know! He has a thousand things--the woman
has nothing, nothing at all except the refuge of home, that for which
she gave up everything!"

Presently she broke off, and something sprang up and caught her in the
throat. Years of indignation were at work in her. "I have had a home,"
she said, in a low, thrilling voice--"a good home; but what did that
cost you? Not one honest sentiment of pity, kindness, or solicitude. You
clothed me, fed me, abandoned me, as--how can one say it? Do I not know,
if coming back you had found me as you expected to find me, what the
result would have been? Do I not know? You would have endured me if I
did not thrust myself upon you, for you have after all a sense of legal
duty, a kind of stubborn honour. But you would have made my life such
that some day one or both of us would have died suddenly. For"--she
looked him with a hot clearness in the eyes--"for there is just so much
that a woman can bear. I wish this talk had not come now, but, since it
has come, it is better to speak plainly. You see, you misunderstand. A
heathen has a heart as another--has a life to be spoiled or made happy
as another. Had there been one honest passion in your treatment of
me--in your marrying me--there would be something on which to base
mutual respect, which is more or less necessary when one is expected to
love. But--but I will not speak more of it, for it chokes me, the insult
to me, not as I was, but as I am. Then it would probably have driven me
mad, if I had known; now it eats into my life like rust."

He made a motion as if to take her hands, but lifting them away quietly
she said: "You forget that there are others present, as well as the fact
that we can talk better without demonstration."

He was about to speak, but she stopped him. "No, wait," she said; "for
I want to say a little more. I was only an Indian girl, but you must
remember that I had also in my veins good white blood, Scotch blood.
Perhaps it was that which drew me to you then--for Lali the Indian girl
loved you. Life had been to me pleasant enough--without care, without
misery, open, strong and free; our people were not as those others which
had learned the white man's vices. We loved the hunt, the camp-fires,
the sacred feasts, the legends of the Mighty Men; and the earth was a
good friend, whom we knew as the child knows its mother."

She paused. Something seemed to arrest her attention. Frank follo