Truda, who had never seen so splendid a brunette, made the same unconscious acknowledgment as her civilized sister. The yacht, its sumptuous fittings, the wonderful things about her, this extraordinary being bending over her in her unusual clothes, all added to the poor little islander’s dismay. Even Celeste, by no means unpleasing in her trim maid’s dress, was a thing for Truda to wonder over. These were the women of that other faraway world of which Beekman had told her. It could not be that in their presence he could continue to love her, and so Truda, agonizingly jealous, was afraid. Everything was new and strange; the yacht itself, the deep throbbing of the hard-pushed engines, the very bed on which she lay, the expensive furnishings of the cabins, added to her trepidation and alarm. Save so far as mental habit and life had been altered by intercourse with Beekman and what he had taught her, she was still, in many of her instincts and habits, a savage, and a savage suddenly and with no warning introduced to the highest civilization.
Fear tied her tongue. She had not said a word. She would not speak. It seemed to her that she had forgotten how to use any language but the native speech of the island. She could only stare in dismay, appalled, silent. Stephanie had an exquisite voice; low, trained, cultivated. Beekman had often admired it and her use of it. She was a singer, and her speaking voice, unlike that of many singers, was as musical as the other. She bent over the girl and addressed her in English.
Truda understood well enough, but she was utterly incapable of answering. Her lips could scarcely frame a Polynesian word, much less an English one. She could only stare wildly. On a venture Stephanie repeated the question in French, then in Italian, then Celeste shook her head.
"She is not of the south, not Latin, mademoiselle," she said; whereupon Stephanie, summoning the remains of a brief schooling in the harsh tongue, repeated the question in very indifferent German.
There was no answer. That exhausted the linguistic possibilities of the cabin. Presently the steward appeared with broth, which the doctor had ordered. The two women, social differences more or less laid aside with this new and interesting plaything, had meanwhile covered the nakedness of the poor girl, who was entirely submissive and unresisting. in their hands, with one of Stephanie’s daintiest and most beautiful night robes. Save for the grass or fiber petticoat of the Polynesian, with an occasional grass mat about her shoulders, Truda had never been so completely dressed before. She was scarcely dressed in that filmy, diaphanous adornment; but by comparison it seemed to her that she was strangely and fully clothed. The lace and linen and silk had a strange feeling to her, yet she was woman enough to delight in the beauty of the garment, to marvel childishly at its color, its softness. She lifted her lovely arm and stared at the short sleeves.