You have been, you are a wolf--a wolf."
He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that it
seemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, but
they choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He became
cool and deliberate.
"You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin
away, and I've picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the
first day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalac
looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the
sun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. I
was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked at you,
and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at the
world as you did then--it was like water from a spring, that look. You
are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, and
when I left what I'd struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, and
I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alone with
me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio duke
wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I married you by
the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were alone
with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot by your
father--"
"By your Chief.
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