No; Susan was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the cries of the frolicking children nor the secret alcove they had both come to know so well impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that the Chief’s handsome son, the forbidden sensitive genius who had known her in ways even she did not suspect, had a full life in which he was prospecting for silver in the Andes, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one subterranean, tender girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most unconquerable day when the message on the dagger had brought him to her attention.
   Suddenly, a confused chorus of greetings from the courtyard shattered her composure into a million barbarian pieces! She whirled around. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the tawdry, chelonian, underappreciated and masculine face she had come to know so well! “I’ve thought of you every minute I’ve been away,” he blurted while he dabbed at her tears with the handkerchief she herself had made for him. “I need you, you sweet little morsel of girl-flesh!”
   At long last as he slid the little ring onto her finger, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not ebony. Wthout him, could she ever have began to wonder how she would explain all this to Ulysses?