“My mother said that they were searching for me, and that if they found me they would take me away. I was very much frightened.”
At the mention of her mother Waldo recalled the little parcel that Nadara’s father had given into his custody for the girl. He unfastened it from the thong that circled his waist, where it had hung beneath his panther-skin garment.
“Here is something your father asked me to bring you,” he said, handing the package to Nadara.
The girl took it and examined it as though it was entirely unfamiliar.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Your father did not say, other than that it contained articles that your mother wore when she died,” he said tenderly, for a great pity had welled up in his heart for this poor, motherless girl.
“That my mother wore!” Nadara repeated, her brows contracted in a puzzled frown. “When my mother died she wore nothing but a single garment of many small skins—very old and worn—and that was buried with her. I do not understand.”
She made no effort to open the package, but sat gazing far off toward the ocean which was just visible through the trees, entirely absorbed in the reverie which Waldo’s words had engendered.
“Could the thing that the old woman told me have been true?” the girl mused half aloud. “Could it have been because it was true that my mother fell upon her with tooth and nail until she had nearly killed her? I wonder if—”
But here she stopped, her eyes riveted in sudden fear and hopelessness upon a thing that she had just espied in the distance.
A great lump rose in her throat, tears came to her eyes, and with them the full measure of realization of what that thing beyond the forest meant to her.
She turned her eyes toward the man. He was sitting with bowed head, playing idly with a large beetle that he had penned within a tiny palisade of small twigs.
At length he made an opening in the barrier.
“Go your way, poor thing,” he murmured. “Heaven knows I realize too well the horrors of captivity to keep any other creature from its fellows and its home.”
A choking sigh that was almost a sob racked the girl. At the sound Waldo looked up to see her pathetic, unhappy eyes upon him. Of a sudden there enveloped him a great desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. He knew not why she was unhappy, but her sorrow cried aloud to him—as he thought simply to the protective instinct that was merely an attribute of his sex.
Nadara raised her hand slowly and pointed through the trees. It was as though she had torn her heart from her breast, so harrowing she felt the consequences of her act would be, but it was for his sake—for the sake of the man she loved.
As Waldo’s eyes followed the direction of her pointing finger he came suddenly to his feet with a wild cry of joy; through the trees, out upon the shimmering surface of the placid sea, there lay a graceful, white yacht.
“Thank God!” cried the man fervently, and sinking to his knees he raised his hands aloft toward the author of joy and sorrow.
A moment later he sprang to his feet.
“Home! Nadara. Home!” he cried. “Can’t you realize it? I am going home. I am saved! Oh, Nadara, child, can’t you realize what it means to me? Home! Home! Home!”
He had been looking toward the yacht as he spoke, but now he turned toward the girl. She was crouching upon the ground, her face in her hands, her slender figure shaken by convulsive tears.
He came toward her and, kneeling, laid his hand upon her shoulder.
“Nadara!” he said gently. “Why do you cry, child? What is the matter?” But she only shook her head, moaning.
He raised her to her feet, and as he supported her his arm circled her shoulders.
“Tell me, Nadara, why you are unhappy?” he urged.
But still she could not speak for sobbing, and only buried her face upon his breast.
He was holding her very close now, and with the pressure of her body against his a fire that, unknown, had been smoldering in his heart for months burst into sudden flame, and in the heat of it there were consumed the mists that had been before the eyes of his heart all that time.
“Nadara,” he asked in a very low voice, “is it because I am going that you cry?”
But at that she pulled away from him, and through her tears her eyes blazed.
“No!” she cried. “I shall be glad when you have gone. I wish that you had never come. I—I—hate you!” She turned and fled back up the valley, forgetful of the little packet Thandar had brought her, which lay forgotten upon the ground where she had dropped it.
Without so much as a backward glance toward the yacht Waldo was off in pursuit of her; but Nadara was as fleet as a hare, so that it was a much winded Waldo who finally overhauled her halfway up the face of a cliff two miles from the ocean.
“Go away!” cried the girl. “Go back with your own kind, to your own home!”
Waldo did not answer.
Waldo was no more.
It was Thandar, the cave man, who took Nadara in his strong arms and crushed her to him.
“My girl!” he cried. “My girl! I love you! And because I am a fool I did not learn until it was almost too late.”
He did not ask if she loved him, for he was Thandar, the cave man. Nor, a moment later, did he need to ask, since her strong, brown arms crept up about his neck and drew his lips down to hers.
It was quite half an hour later before either thought of the yacht again. From where they stood upon the cliff’s face they could see the ocean and the beach.
Several boats were drawn up and a number of men were coming toward
