THE ETERNAL FEMININE
divining that the strangers meant no good, she screamed out, "They are going to murder us." But Grant said that he and she had done no harm and the Malays could mean none, and, taking the woman with him, he went out of the house and a few steps forward to meet his assailants.
These last stopped some twenty yards from Grant and the woman, and she said, "What harm have we done?" The answer was "Titah"—it is by order of the Raja—and they told the woman to leave the infidel and go away. But she replied, "I shall stay with him."
Then several men said, "If you do not go, we will kill you as well as the white man."
Grant may not have understood this sentence of death on himself, he may not have realised how strangely the times were out of joint, that he who was the enemy of no man, who had done no wrong, who represented no cause, should suddenly, in the broad light of day, hear his own death sentence, and in the same breath learn that he was facing his executioners and his account with the world was closed. There was no time to think: instinct said, "There is Death," and doubtless instinct also said, "Death is disagreeable: shun it."
It is commonly reputed that there are people who
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