Now that he thought of it, he much preferred Nodwengo to Hafela, for the one was a just man and the other a tyrant; and he himself was more comfortable as a wealthy private person than he had been as a head medicine-man and a chief of wizards.

He would let things stand; he would prevent the Messenger from eating of that fruit.

A word could do it; he had but to suggest that it was unripe or not wholesome at this season of the year, and it would be cast aside.
All these reflections, or their substance, passed through Hokosa's mind in a few instants of time, and already he was rising to go to the verandah and translate their moral into acts, when another thought occurred to him--How should he face Noma with this tale?
He could give up his own ambitions, but could he bear her mockery, as day by day she taunted him with his faint-heartedness and reproached him with his failure to regain greatness and to make her great?
He forgot that he might conceal the truth from her; or rather, he did not contemplate such concealment, of which their relations were too peculiar and too intimate to permit.

She hated him, and he worshipped her with a half-inhuman passion--a passion so unnatural, indeed, that it suggested the horrid and insatiable longings of the damned--and yet their souls were naked to each other.

It was their fate that they could hide nothing each from each--they were cursed with the awful necessity of candour.
It would be impossible that he should keep from Noma anything that he did or did not do; it would be still more impossible that she should conceal from him even such imaginings and things as it is common for women to hold secret.