Choose, therefore; forget the sins that I have committed to win you and become my wife willingly, and no woman shall ever find a better husband, for then the fire and the tempest will leave my brain and it will grow calm as it was before I saw you.
"Have you still no answer?
Well, I will not hurry you.

See, I must go--do you know what for?
To set scouts lest by any chance your father or other fools should have found my hiding-place, though I think that they can never find it except it be through the wisdom of Sihamba, which they will not seek.

Still I go, and in an hour I will return for your answer, which you must make then, Suzanne, since whether you desire it, or desire it not, fortune has given you to me.

Have you no word for me before I go ?" Now during all this long, half-insane harangue, Suzanne had sat quite silent, making no reply at all, not even seeming to hear the demon, for such he was, whose wicked talk defiled her ears.

But when he asked her whether she had nothing to say to him before he went, still looking not at him, but beyond him, she gave him his answer in one word, the same that she had used when she awoke from her swoon: "_Murderer_." Something in the tone in which she spoke, or perhaps in the substance of that short speech, seemed to cow him; at the least he turned and left the hut, and presently Sihamba heard him talking to the sentry without, bidding him to keep close watch till he came back within an hour.
When Piet went out he left the door-board of the hut open, so that Sihamba dared neither act nor speak, fearing lest the guard should hear or see her through it.