Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/154

 the eyes of his heart all that time.

“Nadara,” he asked in a very low voice, “is it because I am going that you cry?”

But at that she pulled away from him, and through her tears her eyes blazed.

“No!” she cried. “I shall be glad when you have gone. I wish that you had never come. I—I—hate you!” She turned and fled back up the valley, forgetful of the little packet Thandar had brought her, which lay forgotten upon the ground where she had dropped it.

Without so much as a backward glance toward the yacht Waldo was off in pursuit of her; but Nadara was as fleet as a hare, so that it was a much winded Waldo who finally overhauled her half-way up the face of a cliff two miles from the ocean.

“Go away!” cried the girl. “Go back with your own kind, to your own home!”

Waldo did not answer.

Waldo was no more.

It was Thandar, the cave man, who took Nadara in his strong arms and crushed her to him.

“My girl!” he cried. “My girl! I love you! And because I am a fool I did not learn until it was almost too late.”

He did not ask if she loved him, for he was Thandar, the cave man. Nor, a moment later, did