Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/39

 discarding of his roof tree, this turning of the back upon decency and cleanliness and convention, was an incomprehensible madness, but also an act of unspeakable perversity and naughtiness. White with anger, he looked at the sleeping girl, and even as he looked, warned by the marvellous jungle-instinct, she awoke with a leap that bore her a dozen feet away from him. One glance she cast at his set face, then plunged headlong into covert.

Wrath died down within him on the instant, and was replaced by a great fear. Frantically he ran to the spot where she had vanished, calling upon her by name. In vain search he wandered to the edge of the clearing, and so out into the forest, pleading with her to return, vowing that he would not harm a hair of her head, cajoling, entreating, beseeching, and now and again breaking forth into uncontrollable rage and threat. All night he sought for her. The cold gray dawn, creeping up through banks of mist, to look chillingly upon a dew-drenched world, found him, with blank despair in his heart, with soaked clothes and sodden flesh tattered by the jungle thorns, making his way back to his empty house with the plodding pain of a man in a nightmare. A last hope was kindled as he drew near—the hope that Pi-Noi might have crept homeward while he wandered through the night looking for her—but it flickered up for an instant only to die, as the fire had died above the gray ashes which still bore the imprint of her little body.

Kria, sitting lonely in his hut, looked forth upon