In a spirit of boyish
adventure he had cast his lot with the jungle ape. The killing of
the crook in the coast inn had filled his childish mind with terror
of the law, and driven him deeper into the wilds. The rebuffs
that he had met at the hands of men, both black and white, had had
their effect upon his mind while yet it was in a formative state,
and easily influenced.
He had come to believe that the hand of man was against him, and
then he had found in Meriem the only human association he required
or craved. When she had been snatched from him his sorrow had been
so deep that the thought of ever mingling again with human beings
grew still more unutterably distasteful. Finally and for all time,
he thought, the die was cast. Of his own volition he had become
a beast, a beast he had lived, a beast he would die.
Now that it was too late, he regretted it. For now Meriem,
still living, had been revealed to him in a guise of progress and
advancement that had carried her completely out of his life. Death
itself could not have further removed her from him. In her new
world she loved a man of her own kind.
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