CHAPTER IV

NANEA

Presently, muttering something that the listener could not catch, Nahoon
left Nanea, and crept out of the hut by its bee-hole entrance. Then
Hadden opened his eyes and looked round him. The sun was sinking and
a ray of its red light streaming through the little opening filled the
place with a soft and crimson glow. In the centre of the hut--supporting
it--stood a thorn-wood roof-tree coloured black by the smoke of the
fire; and against this, the rich light falling full upon her, leaned the
girl Nanea--a very picture of gentle despair.

As is occasionally the case among Zulu women, she was beautiful--so
beautiful that the sight of her went straight to the white man's heart,
for a moment causing the breath to catch in his throat. Her dress was
very simple. On her shoulders, hanging open in front, lay a mantle of
soft white stuff edged with blue beads, about her middle was a buck-skin
moocha, also embroidered with blue beads, while round her forehead and
left knee were strips of grey fur, and on her right wrist a shining
bangle of copper. Her naked bronze-hued figure was tall and perfect in
its proportions; while her face had little in common with that of the
ordinary native girl, showing as it did strong traces of the ancestral
Arabian or Semitic blood. It was oval in shape, with delicate aquiline
features, arched eyebrows, a full mouth, that drooped a little at the
corners, tiny ears, behind which the wavy coal-black hair hung down to
the shoulders, and the very loveliest pair of dark and liquid eyes that
it is possible to imagine.