"Come," said the girl, "let us make haste. I cannot wait to be home
again! How good it looks!"
Waldo gazed at her in horror. It did not seem credible that this
beautiful young creature could be of such clay as that he looked upon.
It was revolting to believe that she had sprung from the loins of one
of those half-brutes, or that a woman as fierce, repulsive, such as
those he saw before him, could have borne her. It made him sick with
disgust.
He turned from her.
"Go to your people, Nadara," he said, for an idea had come to him.
He had evolved a scheme for escaping a meeting with Flatfoot and Korth,
and the sudden disgust which he felt for the girl made it easier for
him to carry out his design.
"Are you not coming with me?" she cried.
"Not at once," replied Waldo, quite truthfully. "I wish you to go
first. Were we to go together they might harm you when they rushed out
to attack me."
The girl had no fear of this, but she felt that it was very thoughtful
of the man to consider her welfare so tenderly. To humor him, she
acceded to his request.
"As you wish, Thandar," she answered, smiling.
Thandar was a name of her own choosing, after, Waldo had informed her
in answer to a request for his name, that she might call him Mr. Waldo
Emerson Smith-Jones. "I shall call you Thandar," she had replied; "it
is shorter, more easily remembered, and describes you. It means the
Brave One." And so Thandar he had become.
The girl had scarcely emerged from the forest on her way toward the
cliffs when Thandar the Brave One, turned and ran at top speed in
the opposite direction. When he came to the river he gave immediate
evidence of the strides he had taken in woodcraft during the brief
weeks that he had been under the girl's tutorage, for he plunged
immediately into the water, setting out up-stream upon the gravelly
bottom where he would leave no spoor to be tracked down by the eagle
eyes of these primitive men.
He supposed that the girl would search for him; but he felt no
compunction at having deserted her so scurvily. Of course, he had no
suspicion of her real sentiments toward him--it would have shocked
him to have imagined that a low-born person, such as she, had become
infatuated with him.
It would have been embarrassing and unfortunate, but, of course,
quite impossible--since Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones could never form an
alliance beneath him. As for the girl herself, he might as readily have
considered the possibility of marrying a cow, so far from any such
thoughts of her had he been.
On and on he stumbled through the cold water. Sometimes it was above
his head, but Waldo had learned to swim--the girl had made him, partly
by pleas, but largely by the fear that she would ridicule him.
As night came on he commenced to become afraid, but his fear now was
not such a horribly prostrating thing as it had been a few weeks
before. Without being aware of the fact, Waldo had grown a trifle less
timid, though he was still far from lion-like.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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