Part 16 (1/2)
And as he watched her another thought persisted in obtruding itself into his mind She was most beautiful and very desirable; but what did he know of her? Was she not altogether impossible? Was the scene that he had but just witnessed not sufficient proof of her impossibility? A woman who clile! It was quite horrible!
Again the Hon Morison lanced toward him
”You are war I find it quite cool Why do you perspire now?”
He had not intended to let her know that he had seen her with the baboons; but quite suddenly, before he realized what he was saying, he had blurted it out
”I perspire frole when I discovered your pony I wanted to surprise you; but it was I as surprised I saw you in the trees with the baboons”
”Yes?” she said quite uneh it was a irl should be upon intile beasts
”It was horrible!” ejaculated the Hon Morison
”Horrible?” repeated Merie her brows in bewilderment ”What was horrible about it? They are my friends Is it horrible to talk with one's friends?”
”You were really talking with them, then?” cried the Hon Morison ”You understood them and they understood you?”
”Certainly”
”But they are hideous creatures-degraded beasts of a lower order How could you speak the language of beasts?”
”They are not hideous, and they are not degraded,” replied Merie theht ani Should I refuse to know the humans?”
”For the present!” ejaculated the Hon Morison ”You cannotthe! The very idea! You are spoofing me, Miss Meriem You have been kind to these baboons here and they know you and do nottheh,” insisted the girl, seeing the real horror that the man felt in the presence of such an idea reflected in his tone andhireat apes and the lesser apes I dwelt a the branches of the trees I pounced upon the smaller prey and devoured it-raw With Korak and A'ht I hunted the antelope and the boar, and I sat upon a tree limb and made faces at Numa, the lion, and threw sticks at hie that the earth shook
”And Korak built ht ht for me and was kind to me-until I came to Bwana and My Dear I do not recall that any other than Korak was ever kind to irl's voice now and she had forgotten that she was bantering the Hon Morison She was thinking of Korak She had not thought of hireat deal of late
For a time both were silently absorbed in their own reflections as they rode on toward the bungalow of their host The girl was thinking of a God-like figure, a leopard skin half concealing his sh the trees to lay an offering of food before her on his return fro a huge anthropoid ape, while she, Merie limb before the entrance to her sylvan bower It was a pretty picture as she recalled it The other side seldohts-the chill, terrible jungle nights-the cold and das of the savage carnivora as they prowled through the Stygian darkness beneath-the constant ing insects-the loathesohed by the happiness of the sunny days, the freedom of it all, and, hts were rather juhty near falling in love with this girl of who up to the previous moment when she had voluntarily revealed a portion of her past to hiht upon the iven her his love-that he had been upon the verge of offering her his honorable name He trembled a little at the narrowness of his escape Yet, he still loved her There was no objection to that according to the ethics of the Hon Morison Baynes and his kind She was a meaner clay than he He could no e than he could have taken one of her baboon friends, nor would she, of course, expect such an offer from him To have his love would be sufficient honor for her-his name he would, naturally, bestow upon one in his own elevated social sphere
A girl who had consorted with apes, who, according to her own ad them, could have no considerable sense of the finer qualities of virtue The love that he would offer her, then, would, far froht desire or expect
The ht upon the subject thea most chivalrous and unselfish act Europeans will better understand his point of view than Ahted provincials, who are denied a true appreciation of caste and of the fact that ”the king can do no wrong” He did not even have to argue the point that she would be much happier amidst the luxuries of a London apartment, fortified as she would be by both his love and his bank account, than lawfully wed to such a one as her social position warranted There was one question however, which he wished to have definitely answered before he co
”Who were Korak and A'ht?” he asked
”A'ht was a Mangani,” replied Merieht a Mangani be, and a Tarani,” she replied ”The Mangani are covered with hair-you would call them apes”
”Then Korak was a white man?” he asked
”Yes”
”And he was-ah-your-er-your-?” He paused, for he found it rather difficult to go on with that line of questioning while the girl's clear, beautiful eyes were looking straight into his