native women with jars of water upon their heads; the erect, well-
balanced form; the sure, sinuous movement; the step measured, yet free;
the dignity come of carrying the head as though it were a pillar of an
Athenian temple, one of the beautiful Caryatides yonder by the AEgean
Sea.

It smote him as a sudden breath of warm air strikes a face in the night
coolness of the veldt. His pulses quickened, he flushed with the soft
shock of it. There she was, refined, civilized, gowned like other women,
with all the manners and details of civilization and social life about
her; yet, in spite of it all, she did not belong; there was about her
still something remote and alien. It had not to do with appearance
alone, though her eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swift and
varying; it was to be found in the whole presence--something mountain-
like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret, something
remote--brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl. But suppose
that in days to come the thing that did not belong, which was of the
East, of the tan, of the River Starzke; suppose that it should--

With a great effort he drove apprehension and the instant's confused
wonder far away, and when, come close to him, she smiled, showing the
perfect white teeth, and her eyes softened to a dreamy regard of him, all
he had ever felt for her in the past months seemed concentrated into this
one moment. Yet he did not look like a languishing lover; rather like
one inflamed with a great idea or stirred to a great resolve.

For quite a minute they stood gazing as though they would read the whole
truth in each other's eyes. She was all eager, yet timorous; he was
resolved; yet now, when the great moment had come, as it were, like a
stammerer fearing the sound of his own voice. There was so much to say