Then when the meal was over and Dick, picking up the club that had never left him even when fishing, gave her directions to cook the remaining fish, place them in the boat and stay in the boat till his return, she made no objection, though the fear of being alone was like the fear of death.
“I am going to look,” said Dick, “to see if the big canoe is still there and how it lies, and count how many of them there are, and see what they are doing. Wait for me.” He swept the sward, the trees and the lagoon with a glance; then he made off, trailing the club towards the eastern trees.
She had played her part so well that he did not guess her terror. He himself had no fear even of the ape-like men; fear had been left out of his composition when he was born in those same woods he was treading now, light of foot, silent as a panther, and as swift on the trail.
Katafa, left to herself, bent her head for a moment as though a heavy hand were pressing it down. Then, straightening herself and flinging out her arms as though casting fear away, she set to on the work before her.
In half an hour it was finished, the fish cooked and wrapped in leaves and placed in the boat, the fire put out, and all traces of the meal cast into the lagoon.
Then, snuggling down in the dinghy, she waited.
Nothing could be more hidden than her position, nothing more secure, yet fear lay with her, clawing at her heart. Never had she felt such fear as this fear, not for herself now, but for Dick.
It was their first parting. She had not known at all what Dick was to her till now, how every fibre of her being was tied to him, and the true and awful meaning of love—the sexless love that is akin to mother love, the one thing deathless, if there is no death.
For a moment she had felt it on that night when the point of Laminai’s spear killed taminan and self in her and she had flung passion away only to be seized by it again in the arms of Taori.
Since then life had been a dream almost without thought, a happiness whose only stain was the far-off vision of Karolin.