“Maga Jhaere!”

“How exciting!” said Gloria.  “I’m crazy to meet her.”

But Will looked less excited and more anxious than I had ever seen him, and we all three laughed.

“All right!” he said.  “I tell you it’s no joke.  That woman believes she’s got her hooks in.”

We tried to go on talking naturally, but lapsed into uncomfortable silence as the minutes dragged by and no Maga put in her appearance.  Fred began humming through his nose again in that ridiculous way that he thinks seems unconcerned, but that makes his best friends yearn to smite him hip and thigh.

“I guess you were mistaken,” Will said at last, spreading out his shoulders with relief at the mere suggestion.  But I was facing the direction of Zeitoon, as he was not, and again the expression of my face betrayed the facts.

There were two large stones leaning together, with a small triangular gap between them, less than thirty feet from where we sat.  In that gap I could see a pair of eyes, and nothing else.  They had almost exactly the expression of a panther’s that is stalking, not its quarry, but its mortal foe.  In spite of having seen Maga approaching, I would have believed them an animal’s eyes, only that from experience I knew an animal’s eyes betray fear and anger without reason, whereas these blazed with the desperate reasoning that holds fear in contempt.  Panthers can hate, be afraid, sweep fear aside with anger, and plan painstakingly for murderous attack; but it is only behind human eyes that one may recognize the murder—­purpose based on argument.

“I see her,” I said.  “I suspect she’s got a pistol, and—­”

I had not known until that moment that the short hair was standing up the back of my head, but I felt it go down with a creepy cold chill as I spoke.  Then once more it rose.  Knowing she was seen and recognized, Maga got to her feet and stood on the larger of the two stones, looking down on us.  Her hands were on her hips, and I could see no weapon, but her lips moved in voiceless imprecation.

“Are you Maga Jhaere?” asked Gloria, first of us all to recover some measure of self-command.

Maga nodded.  She was barefooted, clothed only in bodice and leather jacket and a rather short ochre-colored skirt that blew in the gaining wind and showed the outline of her lithe young figure.  Her long black hair billowed and galloped in the wind behind her.

“I am Maga Jhaere,” she said slowly, addressing Gloria.  “Who are you?”

“My name is Gloria Vanderman.”

“And that man beside you—­who is he?”

Gloria did not answer.  Will looked more embarrassed than the devil caught in daylight, and Fred recovered his mental equilibrium sufficiently to chuckle.

“Is he your husband?”

“No.”

“Then what you want with ’im?”

No one said a word.  Only, Fred made a movement with his hand behind him that Maga noticed and spurned with a toss of her chin.