slaves of love, and for love’s sake all else is brought to naught, and for this reason they cannot be trusted.  With men, as you know, this is otherwise.  They, too, love, by Nature’s law, but always behind there is something greater than love, although often they do not understand what that may be.  To be powerful, therefore, a woman must be one who does not love too much.  If she cannot love at all, then she is hated and has no power, but she must not love too much.

“Once I thought that I had found such a woman; she was named Mameena, whom all men worshipped and who played with all men, as I played with her.  But what was the end of it?  Just as things were going very well she learned to love too much some man of strange notions, who would have thwarted me and brought everything to nothing, and therefore I had to kill her, for which I was sorry.”

Here he paused to take some more snuff, watching me over the spoon as he drew it up his great nostrils, but as I said nothing, went on—­

“Now after Mameena was dead I bethought me that I would rear up a woman who could still love but should never love a man and therefore never become mad or foolish, because I believed that it was only man who in taking her heart from woman, would take her wits also.  This child, Nombe, came to my hand, and as I thought, so I did.  Never mind how I did it, by medicine perhaps, by magic perhaps, by watering her pride and making it grow tall perhaps, or by all three.  At least it was done, and this I know of Nombe, she will never care for any man except as a woman may care for a brother.

“But now see what happens.  She, the wise, the instructed, the man-despiser, meets a woman of another race who is sweet and good, and learns to love her, not as maids and mothers love, but as one loves the Spirit that she worships.  Yes, yes, to her she is a goddess to be worshipped, one whom she desires to serve with all her heart and strength, to bow down before, making offerings, and at the end to follow into death.  So it comes about that this Nombe, whose mind I thought to make as the wings of a bird floating on the air while it searches for its prey, has become even madder than other women.  It is a disappointment to me, Macumazahn.”

“It may be a disappointment to you, Zikali, and all that you say is very interesting.  But to us it is a danger.  Tell me, will you command Nombe to cease from her folly?”

“Will I forbid the mist to rise, or the wind to blow, or the lightning to strike?  As she is, she is.  Her heart is filled with black jealousy of Mauriti and of you, as a butcher’s gourd is filled with blood, for she is not one who desires that her goddess should have other worshippers; she would keep her for herself alone.”

“Then in this way or in that the gourd must be emptied, Zikali, lest we should be forced to drink from it and that black blood should poison us.”