Page:The Cave Girl - Edgar Rice Burroughs.pdf/248

 She did not know how to tell him—she shrank from causing another the anguish and misery that she had endured.

“Did you know of him?” asked Burlinghame.

Nadara nodded her head.

“Where is he?” cried Waldo’s father. “Where are the people with whom he lived here?”

Nadara came close to John Alden Smith-Jones. There was no fear in her innocent young heart for this man who was Thandar’s father—who loved Thandar—only a great compassion for him in the sorrow that she was about to inflict. Gently she took his hand in hers, raising her sad eyes to his.

“Where is he? Where is my boy?” whispered Mr. Smith-Jones.

“He is with his people, who were my people—the people of whom I have just told you,” replied Nadara softly—“He is dead.” And then she dropped her face upon the man’s hand and wept.

The shock staggered John Alden Smith-Jones. It seemed incredible—impossible—that Waldo could have lived through all that he must have lived through to perish at last but a few short weeks before succor reached him. For a moment he forgot the girl. It was her hot tears upon his hand that aroused him to a consciousness of the present.

“Why do you weep?” he cried almost roughly.

“For you,” she replied, “who loved him, too.”