A god shouldn't marry
a mortal, you know."
The man looked up gravely, but he said nothing.
"I'm going to make you answer me just one more thing," rushed on the
girl, "and then I'm satisfied. You'd forgive me, you say, forgive me
anything; but how about the other man, the one who had induced me to run
away? Would you forgive him, too?"
Silence, dead silence; but this time the Indian's eyes did not drop.
"You may as well tell me, How. I'm irresponsible to-night and I won't
give you any peace until you do. Would you forgive the other man, too?"
Once more for seconds there was a lapse; then slowly the Indian lifted
in his place, lifted until he was sitting, lifted until his face stood
out clear in the light like the carving of a master.
"Forgive _him_, Bess?" A pause. "Do you think I am a god?"
That was all, neither an avowal nor a denial; yet no human being looking
at the speaker that moment would have pressed the query farther, no
human being could have misread the answer. With the same little
hysterical, unnatural laugh the girl sank back in her seat. The tense
hands went lax.
"I'll be good now, How," she said dully. "One isn't married every day,
you know, and it's got on my nerves. I'm finding out a lot of things
lately, and that's one of them: that I have nerves. I never supposed
before that I possessed them."
Deliberately, without a shade of hesitation or of uncertainty, the man
arose.
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