As Djama came near to us I saw the love-light flash into his eyes, and a swift flush rise into his sallow cheeks. He held out his hand and quickened his pace, smiling as sweetly as a woman the while. I was facing him a little in advance, and I heard behind me a sharp, low, shuddering cry of terror that shook my heart as I turned to learn its cause. Golden Star had thrown her arms round Ruth's neck, and was clinging to her, trembling with fear, and looking sideways at Djama with eyes fixed and wide open with terror. You have seen how little children will go smiling and fearless into the arms of one stranger and shrink in hate and terror from another. Their sight is keener than it is in after years, when the dust of the world's conflict has dulled it, and they can see plainly the good and the evil that is hidden behind the mask of the face. So it was with that child-soul of Golden Star's. Though I was now to her as strange as Djama, yet she had seen in me only the friend and brother who loved her and wished her well, and whose heart was clean in her sight; but in Djama she had seen at a single glance the evil that had only been revealed to me after many weeks of watching. Though I hated him for the fear that he had caused her, yet I was glad also, for now I saw that the answer to his proposal would be easier than I had thought for. As for him, his face darkened and his black brows came together, and the love-light in his eyes changed to a glare of anger; but this was only for an instant. It passed more quickly than the thunder-clouds melt round the crest of Illampu. He stopped, and stood with his head slightly bent and his hands spread, palms outward, in the posture of one who asks pardon, and said, in a voice that had no trace of anger,-- 'Forgive me, Ruth! I am afraid I have startled our patient--or perhaps I should rather say yours now. It was something more than stupid of me to come upon you suddenly like this, without any warning. Of all people in the world, I ought to have known better than that. But I suppose seeing Vilcaroya already here made me forget myself. Did she start like that when he came?' 'No,' replied Ruth, still standing with her arm where she had thrown it around Golden Star's shoulders, and stroking her hair with the other. 'She--she saw him farther off than you, and I took her towards him, so I suppose the shock was not so great. But please go away, both of you, now. You see she is terribly frightened, and she is trembling as though someone had struck her. I must take her into the house and get her quiet again, or the consequences may be serious.' Djama turned away without a word, his face darkening again as he did so, and with one backward glance at Golden Star, who had now raised her head from Ruth's breast, and was staring after us with fixed, wide-open eyes, I turned and walked away beside him, neither of us speaking a word, for we were both too busy with our own thoughts.