In a little while Sestrina rose and wandered down to the shore. As she stood by the tropic, silent sea, her mind went back, far away into the past. Once more she looked fondly into the memory of eyes that had long years ago fired her girlish mind with romantic dreams and feverish delight. It was a strange, deep, solemn memory that came to the girl. The years of hopeless longing had imparadised her past. It was as though sorrow and remembrance had, through some spiritual alchemy of the mind, transmuted her memory of other days till now her past sparkled as the spiritual light of carbon shines when the forces of nature have changed it to the diamond’s light divine. It was the light never seen on sea or land, and as vivid to Sestrina as the imaginative flash of a great poet’s mind when he fancies he remembers the old stars that shone over the primeval seas before creation. Sestrina not only possessed this poetic imagination, but she also could hear the whisperings of her own thoughts ere they left her and faded like exiled music into the spaces around her!
Through living for years under the magnetic, spiritual fervour of Hawahee’s weird personality, Sestrina’s mind had gradually reflected, caught the weird light, the wonderful spiritual telepathy which enabled the Hawaiian castaway to converse with her in her sleep, as he lay alone in his silent hut beyond the yam patch!
For some time past, Sestrina had awakened and listened in fright and wondered whether she dreamed; for she could hear mysterious, unfathomable, hidden voices, and instinctively seemed to know that they were deep thoughts haunting Hawahee’s mind as he dreamed in his silent hut over the slope. From those things which Hawahee said to her at times, she knew he had such power, but it was a revelation to her to find that she too possessed so wonderful a gift. It had worried her mind at first. She put the cause down to her own religious fervour and the long years of listening to the murmuring shells of the ocean and the deep bass voices of Kauhilo, Atua and Pelé. Sometimes she would stand on the shore and dream till a strange feeling seemed to exalt her soul, some ecstasy of melancholy that made her feel a wondrous kinship with the universe around her. At such moments she would gaze seaward and dreaming, fancy that her meditations had strangely taken wing! And, incredible as it may seem, the hovering sea-birds, far out over the ocean, would suddenly speed away as though something unseen had suddenly touched their wings! Yes, out there on the vast ocean solitude! It can only be supposed that in some simple, but mysterious, unexplainable way, the girl’s yearning, passionate thoughts really did take shape, and in spiritual air-waves left her soul and flew away, went roaming the seas and passed through the dim ocean horizons of her solitary isle to seek and speak to those whom she had loved in the half-forgotten past.
And so Sestrina was not greatly surprised when Hawahee came back, after his sudden departure for the yam patch, and said: “Who is this man who haunts your dreams so much by night, Sestra, he whose eyes dwell in the bosom of your imagination, aye, so deeply that the gleam sears my lonely soul like fire?”
Sestrina, who had often lain on her lonely couch and listened with unbounded astonishment to the soft passionate murmurings of Hawahee’s sleepless nights, made no reply, but hung her head like a child ashamed.
“Tell me, Sestra. Though I have asked the gods to keep my deeper thoughts from you, they have surely let you hear those voiceless words that tell of my love, all that my sorrowing soul feels for you.”
Then Sestrina, gazed down at her new sandals, and said: “Sometimes I have heard strange voices in the night that told me strange things, and these voices frighten me; what does it all mean, Hawahee?”
“What hast thou heard, O Sestra mine?” said Hawahee as he too turned his face away and sighed.
And then Sestrina, seeing the man’s sorrowful expression, said with the brevity of a woman’s quick wit, “Perhaps ’tis only your prayers which I have heard, for the winds blow soft in the night and could easily drift stray, sad words from your lips to my ears.”
“Ah, wahine, Sestra mine,” murmured that strange, handsome Hawaiian as he gazed steadily away from the girl as though he dare not trust himself to gaze into the dark, unfathomable lustre of her soulful eyes.