No sleep for Sestrina that night! Her brain teemed with wild fancies as she lay on her couch thinking, thinking. The wonder of the figure she had seen behind the temple haunted her soul. For the first time for years she felt the terror of her own loneliness, in the dark, alone in that tiny dwelling, on an isle set in the boundless solitudes of the Pacific Ocean. As the first weird atmosphere, through seeing that shape, began to wear off, she rose from her couch, sat up.
“He shall not know that I have discovered it!” she murmured, as thrilling waves of strange indignation, of passion, and of sorrow for the Hawaiian came to her. She hardly knew what to think of it all. Then the curiosity of the feminine nature asserted itself. “I will watch him! I will see the meaning of it all!” And in this sudden resolution, she lay her head on the pillow again and fell asleep.
Dawn swept over the Pacific seas, bringing the splendour of the tropic day in its train. Sestrina was up with the birds. She saw the first etherealised impression of the sunrise come, as the great artist, Eternity, held the brush of Time in his unerring hand and swept the ocean skyline with a daub of liquid gold. Sestrina saw that daub twinkle like lightning as it ran in its splendid overflow and trickled across the tremendous dark heaving canvas—the Pacific Ocean.
Once more she carefully turned the cooking yams, then she turned her head—Hawahee stood before her.
“Sestra, I have been sleepless the last two nights,” he said, as the castaway woman remarked on his early appearance.
Then Sestrina turned her eyes from his face, for she did not wish him to see the curious wonder that she knew must be visible in her eyes. It was then that Hawahee said: “Sestra, dear wahine, I have gathered no sea-birds’ eggs at all the last two mornings, but have wandered by the shore, watching the dawn and the morning’s gold steal over wide waters and brush all the lagoons with soft fire.”
As Hawahee said this, Sestrina looked swiftly into his eyes. Why did his lips smile so tenderly and yet in so knowing a manner? She suddenly remembered how she had the morning before gazed on her image in the lagoon, had danced to her shadow and chanted! She blushed hotly at the thought that Hawahee had been on the shore side instead of far away seeking the morning seagulls’ eggs, and had spied on her during her strange madness. Hiding her face in her hands, she said: “I hate you!”
Hawahee, who had seen and heard so much, only smiled. “Why this shame, Sestra?” he said as he gazed at her. Sestrina was still trembling in her confusion. Then he continued: “’Tis true that I saw you; do you deny me the brief happiness that the Fates inspired you to give unto my soul at the breaking of the day?”
At hearing these words, and the tender note of Hawahee’s melancholy voice, Sestrina’s shame vanished. She half smiled to herself as she looked up at the tall, dignified man before her and thought of her stone shape behind the temple. And Hawahee smiled too, and was pleased that she should take it all in such good part, for he little knew what she knew!