Slowly he drew his arm from her, and something of the reaction of his thoughts must have betrayed itself in the look that came into his face.

“I guess I’ve already pulled off a rotten deal on the other fellow,” he said, turning to the window.  “That is, if you belong to him.  And if you didn’t why would you stand there with your arms about his neck and he hugging you up like that!”

A few minutes before he had crumpled the picture in his hand and dropped it on the floor.  He picked it up now and mechanically smoothed it out as he made his observation, through the window.  The pack had returned to the stockade.  By the aimless manner in which they had scattered he concluded that for the time at least their mysterious enemies had drawn away from the corral.

Celie had not moved.  She was watching him earnestly.  It seemed to him, as he went to her with the picture, that a new and anxious questioning had come into her eyes.  It was as if she had discovered something in him which she had not observed before, something which she was trying to analyze even as he approached her.  He felt for the first time a sense of embarrassment.  Was it possible that she had comprehended some word or thought of what he had expressed to her?  He could not believe it And yet, a woman’s intuition—­

He held out the picture.  Celie took it and for a space looked at it steadily without raising her eyes to meet his.  When she did look at him the blue in her eyes was so wonderful and deep and the soul that looked out of them was so clear to his own vision that the shame of that moment’s hypocrisy when he had stood with his arm about her submerged him completely.  If she had not understood him she at least had guessed.

“Min fader,” she said quietly, with the tip of her little forefinger on the man in the picture.  “Min fader.”

For a moment he thought she had spoken in English.

“Your—­your father?” he cried.

She nodded.

“Oo-ee-min fader!”

“Thank the Lord,” gasped Philip.  And then he suddenly added, “Celie, have you any more cartridges for this pop-gun?  I feel like licking the world!”

CHAPTER XIV

He tried to hide his jubilation as he talked of more cartridges.  He forgot Bram, and the Eskimos waiting outside the corral, and the apparent hopelessness of their situation.  Her father!  He wanted to shout, or dance around the cabin with Celie in his arms.  But the change that he had seen come over her made him understand that he must keep hold of himself.  He dreaded to see another light come into those glorious blue eyes that had looked at him with such a strange and questioning earnestness a few moments before—­ the fire of suspicion, perhaps even of fear if he went too far.  He realized that he had betrayed his joy when she had said that the man in the picture was her father.