want to do for the sake of a being, a stranger whom he had never seen before.
To tell the truth Sru did not quite comprehend it either, he knew it was so and he left it at that. It was one of the strange and unaccountable things that white men were always doing. What intrigued him was the fact that Le Moan had fooled herself in fancying Peterson a dangerous man capable of injuring her lover and that Peterson had fooled himself in believing her story.
So he talked till Le Moan at last understood the fact that, whatever Peterson’s object in taking her away may have been, he would not have injured Taori, that if she had said nothing he would have gone off after having filled the water breakers at the well, and as he talked and as she listened dumb before the great truth that she had sacrificed everything for nothing, slowly up from the subconscious mind of Sru and urged by his talk, came an idea.
“You will go back,” said Sru. “Listen, it is I, Sru, who am talking—we will go back, you and I, and what tells me is that which lies behind thy left ear.”
Le Moan put her hand up to the amulet hidden beneath her hair.
“We will go back,” went on Sru, “you and I and another man, and perhaps more, all good men who will not hurt Taori—but Pete’son, no—no,” he murmured as if communing with some dark spirit. “He would swallow all. He alone knows the way across
