Ahah threw herself against the post. "You shall not go. I tell you I won't let you," she screamed. In her desperation she almost hurled herself over the balcony, but no answer came. Hagoth had vanished into the night whence he had come. Overwhelmed with remorse for driving him on: steeped in her own misery, she lay where she had fallen until the mocking birds began to sing and the day emerged from the night like Venus, new born, from the sea.
Rising, she dashed the crumpled bell of the passion flower under her feet and entering her apartment she threw herself upon the bed.
When Abish stole softly up to tell her young mistress that the bath water was ready she found her buried among the cushions with all her clothes on, breathing heavily. Throwing a silken shawl over her, she turned and tiptoed out.
IV.
THE TRIUMPH.
Ahah lay languidly back in the boat and dabbled her white hand in the water. Seantum opposite, equally lazy, was doing nothing more strenuous than watch the sunlight on her hair of burnished copper. The servant Abish knelt in the bottom of the boat trying to bring order out of the chaos of flowers with which the craft was loaded. It was the festival of flowers and Ahah had insisted on buying some of every kind she saw. As she had selected them for their gaudiness the effect was picturesque. The boatman who stood in striped cotton garment with bare brown feet and broad brimmed hat drove the canoe along the sluggish canal by means of a pole.
They were enroute to the floating gardens of Miramar. Conversation languished while they looked at the panorama, for the canal was alive with graceful craft as this was a special feast day. There were boats loaded with poppies; others banked with pink rosebuds; more modest symphonies in purple and electric blues,—violets and forget-me-nots, like a demozel, left a fragrant trail behind them. They passed cargoes of green vegetables bound for the city, and houseboats which carried not only the family and their household furniture, but also the livestock, dogs, chickens and parrots.
Gayest of all were the flat bottomed boats filled with troubadours. These children of the sun lent the richness of their voices to the tinkle of their stringed instruments. Everyone seemed bent on merry-making, and as a lonely heart is never so desolate as when buried in a gay crowd, so Ahah felt more poignant misery by contrast.
Thirty days had elapsed since Hagoth's sudden departure. Since then she had had no word from him, and her veiled inquiries had elicited no news. "He is so bent on his man's enterprise, that he would not stop to consider a woman," she exclaimed petulantly, but her good sense told her it would not be wise for him to send her a message. Again, she was consumed with a wild fear that he was dead and during the long hours of the night saw him die twenty deaths in as many different ways. In the meantime she went calmly about her affairs and continued to endure Seantum as there was nothing else to do.
They had planned to spend the day in the rustic bowers of a planter at Miramar, but as they wound in and out among the floating gardens,—at first nothing but patches of variegated green, it was evident that some unusual occurrence was happening on shore. Market venders had deserted their stalls and women had left their meat sizzling on the brazeros,—open air stoves of clay containing glowing charcoal.