him to-night; then we will go to the soldier together,
side by side--I am your woman. Necia will look after the little ones."

Gale stared at her, and as he gazed the red pigment underneath her
skin, the straight-hanging, mane-like hair, the gaudy shawl she never
went without, the shapeless, skin-shod feet, the slovenly, ill-fitting
garb of a mis-cast woman vanished, and he saw her as she was on a day
long past, a slim, shy, silent creature, with great, watchful, trusting
eyes and a soul unspoiled. No woman had ever been so loyal, so
uncomplaining. He had robbed her of her people and her gods. He had
shifted hither and yon at the call of his uncertain fortune, or at a
sign of that lurking fear that always dogged him, and she had never
left his side, never questioned, never doubted, but always served him
like a slave, without asking for a part in that other love, without
sharing in the caresses he had consecrated to a woman she had never
seen.

"By Heaven! You're game, Alluna, but there's a limit even to what I can
take from you," he said, at last. "I don't ever seem to have noticed it
before, but there is. No! I've got to do this thing alone to-night, all
of it, for you have no place in it, and I can't let the little girl go
on like this. The sooner that soldier knows the better." He leaned down
and touched her brown mouth with his grizzled lips. "Thank you, Alluna,
for making a man of me when I'd nearly forgotten. Now you stay here."
He knew he could count on her obedience, and so he left her. When he
had gone she drew the shawl up over her face and crouched in the
doorway, straining her eyes after him through the dark. In time she
began to rock and sway, and then to chant, until the night moaned with
the death-song of her people.

Necia had no idea whither she went; her only thought was to flee from
her kin, who could not understand, to hide under cover in some solitary
place, to let the darkness swallow her up, so that she might give way
to her grief and be just a poor, weak woman. So, with a dull and aching
heart, she wandered, bareheaded, bare-necked, half-demented, and wholly
oblivious to her surroundings, without sense of her incongruous attire
or of the water that squeezed up through the soggy moss at her tread
and soaked her frail slippers. On she stumbled blindly through the murk
like some fair creature of light cast out and banished.

The night was cloudy and a wind came sighing from the north, tossing
t