thereby distracting his attention, he was entirely different from
what he was when his men surrounded him. Apparently he had no
knowledge of this. He showed surprise and gratitude at Joan's
kindness though never pity or compassion for her. That he had become
infatuated with her Joan could no longer doubt. His strange eyes
followed her; there was a dreamy light in them; he was mostly silent
with her.

Before those few days had come to an end he had developed two
things--a reluctance to let Joan leave his sight and an intolerance
of the presence of the other men, particularly Gulden. Always Joan
felt the eyes of these men upon her, mostly in unobtrusive glances,
except Gulden's. The giant studied her with slow, cavernous stare,
without curiosity or speculation or admiration. Evidently a woman
was a new and strange creature to him and he was experiencing
unfamiliar sensations. Whenever Joan accidentally met his gaze--for
she avoided it as much as possible--she shuddered with sick memory
of a story she had heard--how a huge and ferocious gorilla had
stolen into an African village and run off with a white woman. She
could not shake the memory. And it was this that made her kinder to
Kells than otherwise would have been possible.

All Joan's faculties sharpened in this period. She felt her own
development--the beginning of a bitter and hard education--an
instinctive assimilation of all that nature taught its wild people
and creatures, the first thing in elemental life--self-preservation.
Parallel in her heart and mind ran a hopeless despair and a driving,
unquenchable spirit. The former was fear, the latter love. She
believed beyond a doubt that she had doomed herself along with Jim
Cleve; she felt that she had the courage, the power, the love to