Her manner presented a curious combination of shyness and audacity.  Every pretty smile was succeeded swiftly by a look of silent, repressed anxiety, as if put to flight by the recollection of some abiding danger.  At times she would sit down with us and, with her soft cheek dimpled by the knuckles of her little hand, she would listen to our talk; her big clear eyes would remain fastened on our lips, as though each pronounced word had a visible shape.  Her mother had taught her to read and write; she had learned a good bit of English from Jim, and she spoke it most amusingly, with his own clipping, boyish intonation.  Her tenderness hovered over him like a flutter of wings.  She lived so completely in his contemplation that she had acquired something of his outward aspect, something that recalled him in her movements, in the way she stretched her arm, turned her head, directed her glances.  Her vigilant affection had an intensity that made it almost perceptible to the senses; it seemed actually to exist in the ambient matter of space, to envelop him like a peculiar fragrance, to dwell in the sunshine like a tremulous, subdued, and impassioned note.  I suppose you think that I too am romantic, but it is a mistake.  I am relating to you the sober impressions of a bit of youth, of a strange uneasy romance that had come in my way.  I observed with interest the work of his—­well—­good fortune.  He was jealously loved, but why she should be jealous, and of what, I could not tell.  The land, the people, the forests were her accomplices, guarding him with vigilant accord, with an air of seclusion, of mystery, of invincible possession.  There was no appeal, as it were; he was imprisoned within the very freedom of his power, and she, though ready to make a footstool of her head for his feet, guarded her conquest inflexibly—­as though he were hard to keep.  The very Tamb’ Itam, marching on our journeys upon the heels of his white lord, with his head thrown back, truculent and be-weaponed like a janissary, with kriss, chopper, and lance (besides carrying Jim’s gun); even Tamb’ Itam allowed himself to put on the airs of uncompromising guardianship, like a surly devoted jailer ready to lay down his life for his captive.  On the evenings when we sat up late, his silent, indistinct form would pass and repass under the verandah, with noiseless footsteps, or lifting my head I would unexpectedly make him out standing rigidly erect in the shadow.  As a general rule he would vanish after a time, without a sound; but when we rose he would spring up close to us as if from the ground, ready for any orders Jim might wish to give.  The girl too, I believe, never went to sleep till we had separated for the night.  More than once I saw her and Jim through the window of my room come out together quietly and lean on the rough balustrade—­two white forms very close, his arm about her waist, her head on his shoulder.  Their soft murmurs reached me, penetrating, tender, with a calm sad note in the stillness of the night,