The evening was warm, but a bright fire burned in the hut, and she crouched upon a stool by the fire, glancing continually over her shoulder.
"Why do you bide by the fire, seeing that it is so hot, Noma ?" he asked.
"Because I fear to be away from the light," she answered; adding, "Oh, accursed man! for your own ends you have caused me to be bewitched, ah! and that which was born of me also, and bewitched I am by those shadows that you bade me seek, which now will never leave me.

Nor, is this all.
You swore to me that if I would do your will I should become great, ay! and you took me from one who would have made me great and whom I should have pushed on to victory.

But now it seems that for nothing I made that awful voyage into the deeps of death; and for nothing, yet living, am I become the sport of those that dwell there.

How am I greater than I was--I who am but the second wife of a fallen witch-doctor, who sits in the sun, day by day, while age gathers on his head like frost upon a bush?
Where are all your high schemes now?
Where is the fruit of wisdom that I gathered for you?
Answer, Wizard, whom I have learned to hate, but from whom I cannot escape!" "Truly," said Hokosa in a bitter voice, "for all my sins against them the heavens have laid a heavy fate upon my head, that thus with flesh and spirit I should worship a woman who loathes me.

One comfort only is left to me, that you dare not take my life lest another should be added to those shadows who companion you, and what I bid you, that you must still do.