She sighed, then stole up the shore and entered her lone dwelling. There, in her chamber, she knelt in fervent prayer, appealing to the gods which Hawahee had taught her to worship, enabling her eyes to see the splendour, the beauty and sorrow of Creation.
Notwithstanding all that had happened, all that troubled her, deep in her fatalistic heart a gleam of hope remained. She looked like Beauty’s self kneeling there, as she prayed in her hushed chamber. Alas! she might easily have been some castaway representation of a sad, lovely Pandora dwelling on a lonely isle of the wine-dark seas of the boundless Pacific. Just as the Greek goddess brought Promethean fires from Heaven, and ills to destroy peace of mind, Sestrina had brought a fatal casket of love and passion to that isle’s sole humanity—Hawahee’s sorrowing heart. She too was fatally All-gifted. Some far-seeing Aphrodite of inscrutable spite had robed her with beauty’s charm only that she might stir the heart of man to rebellious thoughts, turning his dreams from the gods to misery, and plunging her own peace of mind into the depths of despair, Hope alone remaining. Yes, Sestrina had also brought the blessings of the gods to the arcadian loveliness of that tropical isle, only to open the casket full of the gifts of Heaven, to see them escape—fly away into the darkness.
CHAPTER VIII
I am the sad composer of all time;
The ocean’s deep orchestral boom—my own!
The singing birds and winds of every clime
Without my ears would be as songless stone.
The stars will cease to sparkle at the last,
When fades my mem’ry of the ages past,
And God falls from pale reason’s shadow-throne.