He worked with head bent as if lost in thought; then, pausing in his work, he raised his head and looked at her, his lips pursed ever so slightly, the trace of a wrinkle on his forehead.
She heard the stitches cease. Slowly raising her face, her eyes met his fully, without flinching, steadfast, whilst with her eyes still clinging to his, her breast rose with a sigh that died to a shudder. He had dropped the needle from his hand and the sail from his knees. Leaning forward with half-parted lips, his respiration ceased whilst her gaze fell away languorously like the gaze of a dying person, only to be raised again and plunged into his very soul.
They were standing now, the mat between them, Katafa flushed, shuddering, half laughing, as one might fancy a being new-dead and on the threshold of Paradise. Dick, his nostrils wide-spread, his pupils broad with new-born desire, flinging out his arm, tried to seize her, and grasped—nothing. She had evaded him as though some wind had blown her aside. The attempt to seize her had thrown her into the world we enter when we fall asleep.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PRISON OF THE TREES
Just as a person in some phases of the state we call the dream condition has to run or finds himself rooted to the spot, Katafa bent aside with no more volition than a reed possesses when moved by the wind.
The very intensity of her longing and her passion cast her more completely into the grasp of the subconscious power that had her in its charge.
Dick, with a sharp cry as if someone had struck him, sprang across the mat, grasped at her again, and missed. She had bent and, springing erect again, all her soul craving for the embrace, with arms outspread like a drowning person, she in turn tried to grasp. Then, turning, she ran, as the dreamer runs followed by the viewless, across the sward. Pursued, yet untouched, she passed with the speed of Atalanta. The leaves divided before her, yet still she ran, unharmed by bramble, unhurt by tree, seeing nothing, protected by instinct.
Then, far in the woods, where the tall matamatas tossed their broad green leaves to the wind, she crouched amidst the ferns like a hare in its form.
The great crisis had come and passed and taminan had triumphed.