“Let us be calm, for if it is true, this that you say, we have eternities of happiness before us.”
She well knew that Hawahee was strong and brave and that when he said he could outwit the gods he must have some wonderful plan in his mind.
“Let us away from here,” said Sestrina.
Hawahee through long habit turned to pay obeisance to the lone, lovely figure that stood staring in splendid blindness from the shadows.
Sestrina noticed the spontaneous act. “Hawahee,” she murmured softly, a note of deep sorrow in her voice, “I do not mind; kneel before the beauty and innocence of myself, the loveliness that your noble mind has created out of me; kneel to the innocence of my girlhood, the heaven of innocence that was mine when I once prayed and confessed to a dim, grey-headed old priest named Père Chaco.”
Hawahee gazed into her eyes as she ceased speaking.
“Why are the tears falling, why can I hear the poetry and all the loveliness of the stars in the big sky, the innocence and beauty of the flowers and the melancholy of the sunsets at Pelé’s altar, why? O Sestra, why does the music of your voice sound so?”
Sestra made no reply, but to Hawahee’s astonishment, moved four steps forward and flung herself down on her knees before the sorrowful, divine-looking carven cold stone image of herself—and wept bitterly.
That same night Sestrina knelt in her chamber and prayed to the heathen gods and to the great White God of Langi. Then she stood up and stared through the small window-hole and heard the hidden voices murmuring in the great speech of her soul. Her thoughts went out over the seas. She heard the roosting cockatoos, in the palms outside, give a dismal, startled screech, and even Rohana croaked as though in fright, “O Atua! O Pelé!” as she sent her thoughts across the oceans, away through the dim starry skylines that surrounded her island world. Then she sobbed as she lay in bed. She thought of the past. And as she lay alone in her silent chamber she heard the soft, quivering murmurings of Hawahee’s dreams coming across the orange-scented hollow from his lonely hut. “O Hawahee, ’tis love of the flesh and not of the soul!” she cried.