uldn't walk a mile to save my life."

"And they will come off if they get wet."

"But they make me very tall."

"They don't wear as well as moccasins." Both laughed delightedly till
he broke in, impulsively:

"Oh, girl, don't you know how beautiful you are?"

"Of course I do!" she cried, imitating his change of voice; then added,
naively, "That's why I hate to take it off."

"Where did you learn to wear things like that?" he questioned. "Where
did you get that--well--that air?"

"It seems to me I've always known. There's nothing strange about it.
The buttons and the hooks and the eyes are all where they belong. It's
instinct, I suppose, from father's side--"

"Probably. I dare say I should understand the mechanism of a
dress-suit, even if I'd never seen one," said the man, amused, yet
impressed by her argument.

"I've always had visions of women dressed in this kind of clothing,
white women--never natives--not dressed like this exactly, but in
dainty, soft things, not at all like the ones I wear. I seem to have a
memory, although it's hardly that, either--it's more like a dream--as
if I were somebody else. Father says it is from reading too much."

"A memory of what?"

"It's too vague and tantalizing to tell what it is, except that I
should be called Merridy."

"Merridy? Why that?"

"I'll show you. See." She slipped her hand inside the shawl and drew
from her breast a thin gold chain on which was strung a band ring. "It
was grandmother's--that's where I got the fancy for the name of
Merridy, I suppose."

"May I look?"

"Of course. But I daren't take it off. I haven't had it off my neck
since I was a baby." She held it out for him to examine, and, although
it brought his head close to hers, there was no trace of coquetry in
the invitation. He read the inscription, "From Dan to Merridy," but had
no realization of what it meant, for he glimpsed the milk-white flesh
almost at his lips, and felt her breath stirring his hair, while the
delicate scent of her person seemed to loose every strong emotion in
him. She was so dainty and yet so virile, so innocent and yet so wise,
so cold and yet so pulsating.

"It is very pretty," he said, inanely.

At the look in his eyes as he raised his head her own widened, and she
withdrew from him imperceptibly, dismissing him with a mere inflection.

"I wish you would send Poleon here. It's time he saw his present."

As Burrell walked out into the air he shut his jaws