Outside the hut, her back to the setting sun, stood the woman. Saxe had of course known that Mary would be dressed like a native; but this figure staggered him. She was half naked, after the fashion of the tribe, a long petticoat being her only garment. Undoubtedly her skin had been originally fair, Saxe said; but it was tanned to a deep brown--virtually bronzed. For that matter, there was hardly an inch of her that was not tattooed or painted. Some great design, crudely smeared in with thick strokes of ochre, covered her throat, shoulders, and breast. Over it were hung rows and rows of shells, the longest rows reaching to the top of the petticoat. Her face was oddly marred--uncivilized, you might say--by a large nose-ring, and a metal disk that was set in the lower lip, distending it. Forehead and cheeks were streaked with paint, and her straight black hair was dressed after the tribal fashion: stiffened with grease, braided with shells, puffed out with wooden rolls to enormous size. Her eyelids were painted red. That was not a habit of the tribe, and might point to an Arab tradition. The painted eyelids and the streaks that seemed to elongate the eyes themselves were Saxe’s despair--he had counted on meeting the eyes of Mary Bradford. To his consternation, the woman stood absolutely silent, her eyes bent on the ground, her face in shadow. Even Saxe, who had no psychology, seems to have seen that Mary Bradford would, in that plight--if it _was_ she--wait for him to speak first. But I think he had expected her at least to faint. Saxe looked at her long without speaking. He was trying, he said, to penetrate her detestable disguise, to find some vulnerable point where he could strike at her very heart, and know. In the midst of his bewilderment, he grew cool--cold, even. He gave himself orders (he told me afterward) as a general might send them from the rear. His tongue, his hands, his feet were very far off, but they obeyed punctiliously. My own opinion is that Saxe never, from the moment when he saw the woman, believed it to be Mary. Her back, as I have said, was against the light. As the purchaser of a slave, he might well wish to see her more fully revealed. He gave the order through the interpreter: “Turn to the light.” As she turned obediently and stood in profile against the scarlet west, he saw that her form was unshapely. On her back were a few scars, long since healed. That moment was undoubtedly Hell for Saxe, in spite of the doubt upon him. But what must it have been for the impassible creature before him? Saxe saw that he must play the game alone. “Mary,” he said quietly in English, “I have come to take you home.” In the circumstances, it was the stupidest thing he could have said; but the only thing he thought of was speaking in English. If it was Mary, those words, he thought, would reach her, would dispel her shame, or, if she were mad, pierce her madness.