“You do not know us,” I told her. “We have brought our women, our children, our flocks and herds down into the orange groves of the Kalkars and there we shall remain. If we cannot drive the Kalkars into the sea today we shall have to wait until tomorrow. It has taken us three hundred years to drive them this far, but in all that time we have never given back a step that we have once gained—we have never retreated from any position to which we have brought our families and our stock.” “You have a large family?” she asked. “I have no wife,” I replied as I rose to add fuel to the fire. As I returned with a handful of sticks I saw that she hugged closer to the blaze and that she shivered with the cold. I removed my Kalkar robe and threw it across her shoulders. “No!” she cried, rising; “I cannot take it. You will be cold.” She held it out toward me. “Keep it,” I said. “The night will be cold, and you cannot go until morning without covering.” She shook her head. “No!” she repeated. “I cannot accept favors from an enemy who hates me.” She stood there, holding the red robe out toward me. Her chin was high and her expression haughty. I stepped forward and took the robe, and as her hand dropped to her side I threw the woolen garment about her once more and held it there upon her slim figure. She tried to pull away from it, but my arm was about her, holding the robe in place, and as I guessed her intention, I pressed the garment more closely around her, which drew her to me until we stood face to face, her body pressed against mine. As I looked down into her upturned face our eyes met and for a moment we stood there as though turned to stone. I do not know what happened. Her eyes, wide and half frightened, looked up into mine, her lips were parted and she caught her breath once in what was almost a sob. Just for an instant we stood thus and then her eyes dropped and she bent her head and turned it half away and at the same time her muscles relaxed and she went almost limp in my arms. Very gently I lowered her to her seat beside the fire and adjusted the robe about her. Something had happened to me. I did not know what it was, but of a sudden nothing seemed to matter so much in all the world as the comfort and safety of Bethelda. In silence I sat down opposite her and looked at her as though I never before had laid eyes upon her, and well might it have been that I never had, for, by The Flag! I had not seen her before, or else, like some of the tiny lizards of the desert, she had the power to change her appearance as they change their colors, for this was not the same girl to whom I had been talking a moment since—this was a new and wonderful creature of a loveliness beyond all compare. No, I did not know what had happened, nor did I care—I just sat there and devoured her with my eyes. And then she looked up and spoke four words that froze my heart in my bosom.