The drama was in pantomime to me, as to the Indians, for the cousins
spoke in English. But I could understand the woman's face. She spoke
in monosyllables, but I could have pitied any other man for the gulf
she put between them by her look. She was more than scornful; torn and
disheveled as she was, she was cruelly radiant, her eyes black-lined
and her lips hard. She was unassailable. And when she met her
kinsman's eye I gloried in her till I could have laid my cheek on the
ground at her feet.
It was plain they were kinsmen. I had marked the strange blood
resemblance between them when I first saw the man, and it was doubly to
be noted now. It was blood against blood as they faced each other.
And it came to me that it was more than a personal duel. No wrong is
so unforgivable as one from our own family whose secret weaknesses we
know and share, and I felt that the repulsion in the woman's eyes was
part for herself and part for her pride of race. Yet I was uncertain
of the issue. The tie of blood is strong, and after a few minutes I
thought that Starling was gaining ground. His great personality
enwrapped us all, and his strange, compelling voice went on and on and
on, pleading, pleading in a tongue that I could not understand.
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