But where would she go? That other man, the one who walked on the cliffs! Regan had never seen him; but Father Renaudin had seen him and had reported to Regan his wonderful, God-like beauty.
“The Sun Island! Perhaps she is there!”
Regan rushed into the night; darkness was there; he could see nothing, but he cared for nothing. The winds cut like a keen knife, but a knife more cruel had cut his heart.
“Good-bye! Good-bye!”
The winds howled those words. They would say nothing else.
“Rondah, Rondah,” he whispered to the night, “it would have been better not to have written it—‘Good-bye!’”
He saw the blaze of light of the Sun Island; he climbed the cliffs to his own stone house. The bird people looked like corpses in the gray light. He drank a stimulating liquid. He lighted the firewood which he had ordered so carefully piled to make a great, cheerful blaze for Rondah.
He sat beside this blaze and waited for the whitening of darkness, which was day.
If the sleep had not been almost death, they would have wakened to mourn with him, those tender-hearted, sympathetic bird people. As it was, they moved not while the awful sobs sounded in the drear house.
But why did Regan read, and again read, those cruel words, “Good-bye?”