time that he had really seen her. The
circumstances that had thrown them together, the dangers through which
they had passed, all the weird and horrible surroundings that had
formed the background of his knowledge of her had had their effect--she
had been but the companion of an adventure; her self-reliance, her
endurance, her loyalty, had been only what one man might expect of
another, and he saw that he had unconsciously assumed an attitude
toward her that he might have assumed toward a man. Yet there had been
a difference--he recalled now the strange sensation of elation that had
thrilled him upon the occasions when the girl had pressed his hand in
hers, and the depression that had followed her announcement of her love
for An-Tak.

He took a step toward her. A fierce yearning to seize her and crush
her in his arms, swept over him, and then there flashed upon the screen
of recollection the picture of a stately hall set amidst broad gardens
and ancient trees and of a proud old man with beetling brows--an old
man who held his head very high--and Bradley shook his head and turned
away again.

They went back then to their little acre, and the days came and went,
and the man fashioned spear and bow and arrows and hunted with them
that they might have meat, and he made hooks of fishbone and caught
fishes with wondrous flies of his own invention; and the girl gathered
fruits and cooked the flesh and the fish and made beds of branches and
soft grasses. She cured the hides of the animals he killed and made
them soft by much pounding. She made sandals for herself and for the
man and fashioned a hide after the manner of those worn by the warriors
of her tribe and made the man wear it, for his own garments were in
rags.

She was always the same--sweet and kind and helpful--but always there
was about her manner and her expression just a trace of wistfulness,
and often she sat and looked at the man when he did not know it, her
brows puckered in thought as though she were trying to fathom and to
understand him.

In the face of the cliff, Bradley scooped a cave from the rotted
granite of which the hill was composed, making a shelter for them
against the rains. He brought wood for their cook-fire which they used
only in the middle of the day--a time when there was little likelihood
of Wieroos being in the air so far from their city--and then he learned
to bank it with earth in such a way that the embers held until the
fol