The Indian had not been looking at him.  Since that first moment when the two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his presence.  Nor did he alter now.  Erect as a maize plant, dressed once more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful, he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl.  More maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man.  Answering, the hot blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until his collar choked him.  Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband, tugged until it was free.  Equally involuntarily he took a step forward menacingly.

“Curse you, How Landor,” he blazed, “you’ve learned at last, perhaps, not to dare me to take something of yours away from you.”  Word by word his voice had risen until he fairly shouted.  “You’ve lost, fool; lost, lost!  Are you blind that you can’t see?  You’ve lost, I say!”

From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that instant the room became deathly still.

A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then, white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so, motionless:—­for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was speaking.

“You don’t know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?” it chided.  Just a step the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the white man’s presence.  His eyes were steady and level.  His voice, unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was even as before.

“I won’t forgive you for what you’ve just done, Mr. Craig,” he said.  “I’ll merely forget that you’ve done anything at all.  One thing I expect, however, and that is that you’ll not interrupt again.  You may listen or not, as you wish.  Later, I may have a word to say to you; but now there is nothing to be said.”  Just a moment longer the look held, a moment wherein the other man felt his tongue grow dumb; then with the old impassivity, the old isolation, the black eyes shifted until they rested on the face of the girl.

But for still another moment—­he was as deliberate as nature herself, this man—­he stood so, looking down.  Always slender, he had grown more so these last weeks.  Moreover, he had the look of one weary unto death.  His black eyes were bright, mysteriously bright, and on his thin hands, folded across his chest, the veins stood out full and prominent; but look where one would on the lithe body, the muscles lay distinct beneath the close-fitting clothes, distinct to emaciation.  Standing there now, very grave, very repressed, there was nevertheless no reproach in his expression, no trace of bitterness; only a haunting tenderness, infinite in its pathos.  When he spoke the same incredible tolerance throbbed in the low-pitched voice.