Part 16 (2/2)
She looked up wistfully at the handsome and noble countenance above her, so different fro
”Yes; you are not Indian”
In that one expression she unconsciously told Cecil how her sensitive nature shrank from the barbarism around her; how the tastes and aspirations she had inherited fros
In a little while they were seated on a grassy bank in the shade of the trees, talking together She bade hiht, beautiful look came back as she heard the tale
”They are kind to wo them mere burden-bearers; they have pleasant homes; they dwell in cities? Then they are like entle, kind, huht up life and rim, bloodstained land”
”_This_ land!” Her face darkened and she lifted her hand in a quick, repelling gesture ”This land is a grave The clouds lie black and heavy on the spirit that longs for the sunlight and cannot reach it”
She turned to hiain ”Go on, your words are music”
He continued, and she listened till the story of his country and his wanderings was done When he ended, she drew a glad, deep breath; her eyes were sparkling with joy
”I am content,” she said, in a voice in which there was a deep heart-thrill of happiness ”Since ed, oh so often, for some one who talked and felt as she did to co in the night a long tiht and warood!”
”Allah!”
”Yes; he was my mother's God, as the Great Spirit is my father's”
”They are both names for the sa, even as the sun is called by many names by lad It is good to learn that both prayed to the one God, though they did not know it But ht me to use the name of Allah, and not the other And while my father and the tribes call ave et”
”What is it?”
”I have never told it, but I will tell you, for you can understand”
And she gave hiularly melodious name, of a character entirely different frouessed to be Arabic or Hindu
”It ' My et it, and to rerow to be like the Indians, but to pray to Allah, and to watch and hope, and that so would cos around me And now you have colance race and mobility of her nature, all roused and vivid under his influence, transfigured her face, ed through hiht, ”had I not becoht have ht have filled one froht years he had seen only the faces of savage woht years his life had been steeped in bitterness, and all that was tender or romantic in his nature had been cramped, as in iron fetters, by the coarseness and stolidity around him Now, after all that dreary time, he met one who had the beauty and the refinelance, the touch of her dress or hair, the soft tones of her voice, had for him an indescribable charm? Was it any wonder that his heart went out to her in a yearning tenderness that although not love was dangerously akin to it?
He was startled at the sweet and burning tu within his off, or leave her Leave her! The gloorew tenfold blacker than ever All the light earth held for hiirl who sat talking so o,” he forced hith, ”The sun is alain if you wish”
”But you o yet; wait till the sun reaches the mountain-tops yonder I want you to tell ered and talked while the sun sank lower and lower in the west It seeone down so fast before