“To the already great burden of the obligations we owe you, sir,” said Professor Porter, with trembling voice, “is now added this greatest of all services. You have given me the means to save my honor.”
Clayton, who had left the room a moment after Canler, now returned.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I think we had better try to reach town before dark and take the first train out of this forest. A native just rode by from the north, who reports that the fire is moving slowly in this direction.”
This announcement broke up further conversation, and the entire party went out to the waiting automobiles.
Clayton, with Jane, the professor and Esmeralda occupied Clayton’s car, while Tarzan took Mr. Philander in with him.
“Bless me!” exclaimed Mr. Philander, as the car moved off after Clayton. “Who would ever have thought it possible! The last time I saw you you were a veritable wild man, skipping about among the branches of a tropical African forest, and now you are driving me along a Wisconsin road in a French automobile. Bless me! But it is most remarkable.”
“Yes,” assented Tarzan, and then, after a pause, “Mr. Philander, do you recall any of the details of the finding and burying of three skeletons found in my cabin beside that African jungle?”
“Very distinctly, sir, very distinctly,” replied Mr. Philander.
“Was there anything peculiar about any of those skeletons?”
Mr. Philander eyed Tarzan narrowly.
“Why do you ask?”
“It means a great deal to me to know,” replied Tarzan. “Your answer may clear up a mystery. It can do no worse, at any rate, than to leave it still a mystery. I have been entertaining a theory concerning those skeletons for the past two months, and I want you to answer my question to the best of your knowledge—were the three skeletons you buried all human skeletons?”
“No,” said Mr. Philander, “the smallest one, the one found in the crib, was the skeleton of an anthropoid ape.”
“Thank you,” said Tarzan.
In the car ahead, Jane was thinking fast and furiously. She had felt the purpose for which Tarzan had asked a few words with her, and she knew that she must be prepared to give him an answer in the very near future.
He was not the sort of person one could put off, and somehow that very thought made her wonder if she did not really fear him.
And could she love where she feared?
She realized the spell that had been upon her in the depths of that far-off jungle, but there was no spell of enchantment now in prosaic Wisconsin.
Nor did the immaculate young Frenchman appeal to the primal woman in her, as had the stalwart forest god.
Did she love him? She did not know—now.
She glanced at Clayton out of the corner of her eye. Was not here a man trained in the same school of environment in which she had been trained—a man with social position and culture such as she had been taught to consider as the prime essentials to congenial association?
Did not her best judgment point to this young English nobleman, whose love she knew to be of the sort a civilized woman should crave, as the logical mate for such as herself?
Could she love Clayton? She could see no reason why she could not. Jane was not coldly calculating by nature, but training, environment and heredity had all combined to teach her to reason even in matters of the heart.
That she had been carried off her feet by the strength of the young giant when his great arms were about her in the distant African forest, and again today, in the Wisconsin woods, seemed to her only attributable to a temporary mental reversion to type on her part—to the psychological appeal of the primeval man to the primeval woman in her nature.
If he should never touch her again, she reasoned, she would never feel attracted toward him. She had not loved him, then. It had been nothing more than a passing hallucination, super-induced by excitement and by personal contact.
Excitement would not always mark their future relations, should she marry him, and the power of personal contact eventually would be dulled by familiarity.
Again she glanced at Clayton. He was very handsome and every inch a gentleman. She should be very proud of such a husband.
And then he spoke—a minute sooner or a minute later might have made all the difference in the world to three lives—but chance stepped in and pointed out to Clayton the psychological moment.
“You are free now, Jane,” he said. “Won’t you say yes—I will devote my life to making you very happy.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
That evening in the little waiting room at the station Tarzan caught Jane alone for a moment.
“You are free now, Jane,” he said, “and I have come across the ages out of the dim and distant past from the lair of the primeval man to claim you—for your sake I have become a civilized man—for your sake I have crossed oceans and continents—for your sake I will be whatever you will me to be. I can make you happy, Jane, in the life you know and love best. Will you marry me?”
For the first time she realized the depths of the man’s love—all that he had accomplished in so short a time solely for love of her. Turning her head she buried her face in her arms.
What had she done? Because she had been afraid she might succumb to the pleas of this giant, she had burned her bridges behind her—in her groundless apprehension that she might make a terrible mistake, she had made a worse one.
And then she told him all—told him the truth word by word, without attempting to shield herself or condone her error.
“What can we do?” he asked. “You
