Why should he not take her for his own, willing or unwilling though the islanders might be, pleased or displeased though Hano might show himself? Although she could not describe it, the girl had grown passionately devoted to him in that brief but most familiar intercourse and intimacy, that was as close as could obtain. He felt sorry for Hano in a way, the only man on the island who might have aspired to this beautiful maiden, when he found himself suddenly thrust back, his place taken by this stranger; for Hano life, which had been so fair, became horrible.
With fiery energy Hano paid more direct court to Truda. He protested vehemently to Kobo. He sought to enlist the sympathies of the other men and women on the island and perhaps succeeded to some extent, but not to the point of open resistance. The islanders looked up to Hano, but they looked up much more to Truda herself, whose beauty and purity of blood particularly appealed to them, and they were mightily afraid of stern old Kobo, who seemed to have the determination of matters in hand, and who was much attracted to this new inhabitant cast up by the sea upon their shores.
As the days slipped by, as his association with the maiden revealed more and more a simplicity of mind, a tractability of soul, a brightness of spirit, a quickness of intellect, that accorded with her absolute physical perfection, Beekman became more and more in love with her. He set himself to teach her to speak English, and she learned with the facility of a child. He could not teach her to read or write. He had no material for either, but he opened to her his well-stored mind. There was little else to do, in fact, and the two sat together for hours, the woman receiving, the man giving. The fact that she soon learned to speak in English added to the awe in which most of the islanders held the girl, increased the hatred of Hano, and at last aroused the suspicion of the patriarch.
Beekman was careful of the feelings of his new friends, but when it came to a question between their feelings and the woman he loved it was not difficult to see that everything else must give way. In all these idyllic days the American had held fast to his purpose of getting into that building, which was the only spot from which he was barred, in order that he might solve the mystery of the presence of this people on the island, the key to which he was sure would be found there.