But this account I am less inclined to trust; I regard the first
as true, for after all I hate Thomas Glahn and believe him capable of
the worst. But, however it may have been, he never spoke himself of the
affair with that noble lady, and I did not ask him about it. What
business was it of mine?
As we sat there on the boat, I remember we talked about the little
village we were making for, to which neither of us had been before.
"There's a sort of hotel there, I believe," said Glahn, looking at the
map. "Kept by an old half-caste woman, so they say. The chief lives in
the next village, and has a heap of wives, by all accounts--some of them
only ten years old."
Well, I knew nothing about the chief and his wives, or whether there was
a hotel in the place, so I said nothing. But Glahn smiled, and I thought
his smile was beautiful.
I forgot, by the way, that he could not by any means be called a perfect
man, handsome though he was. He told me himself that he had an old
gunshot wound in his left foot, and that it was full of gout whenever
the weather changed.
II
A week later we were lodged in the big hut that went by the name of
hotel, with the old English half-caste woman. What a hotel it was! The
walls were of clay, with a little wood, and the wood was eaten through
by the white ants that crawled about everywhere.
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