“I’m licked,” he went on, smiling frankly at her.  “At least for the present.  Maybe I’ve gone loony, like Bram, and don’t realize it yet.  I set out for a couple of Indians, and find a madman; and at the madman’s cabin I find you, looking at first as though you were facing straight up against the door of-of-well, seeing that you can’t understand I might as well say it—­of hell!  Now, if you weren’t afraid of Bram, and if he hasn’t hurt you, why did you look like that?  I’m stumped.  I repeat it—­dead stumped.  I’d give a million dollars if I could make Bram talk.  I saw what was in his eyes.  You saw it—­and that pretty pink went out of your face so quick it seemed as though your heart must have stopped beating.  And yet you’re trying to tell me he hasn’t harmed you.  My God—­I wish I could believe it!”

In her face he saw the reflection of the change that must have come suddenly into his own.

“You’re a good fifteen hundred miles from any other human being with hair and eyes and color like yours,” he continued, as though in speaking his thoughts aloud to her some ray of light might throw itself on the situation.  “If you had something black about you.  But you haven’t.  You’re all gold—­pink and white and gold.  If Bram has another fit of talking he may tell me you came from the moon—­that a chasse-galere crew brought you down out of space to keep house for him.  Great Scott, can’t you give me some sort of an idea of who you are and where you same from?”

He paused for an answer—­and she smiled at him.  There was something pathetically sweet in that smile.  It brought a queer lump into his throat, and for a space he forgot Bram.

“You don’t understand a cussed word of it, do you?” he said, taking her hand in both his own and holding it closely for a moment.  “Not a word.  But we’re getting the drift of things—­ slowly.  I know you’ve been here quite a while, and that morning, noon and night since the chasse-galere brought you down from the moon you’ve had nothing to put your little teeth into but meat.  Probably without salt, too.  I saw how you wanted to throw yourself down on that pile of stuff on the floor.  Let’s have breakfast!”

He led her into the outer room, and eagerly she set to work helping him gather the things from the floor.  He felt that an overwhelming load had been lifted from his heart, and he continued to tell her about it while he hurried the preparation of the breakfast for which he knew she was hungering.  He did not look at her too closely.  All at once it had dawned upon him that her situation must be tremendously more embarrassing than his own.  He felt, too, the tingle of a new excitement in his veins.  It was a pleasurable sensation, something which he did not pause to analyze just at present.  Only he knew that it was because she had told him as plainly as she could that Bram had not harmed her.