Here they were at last alone, all trouble done with for the moment, the past like a tempestuous sea, the future veiled and vague, but great and full of the splendours of Promise.
For a moment neither of them spoke, their eyes following the spray clouds of the breakers and the flighting gulls wheeling above the flooding sea. Then as they turned one to the other, and as he seized her by the shoulders, to Katafa for the first time fully came the knowledge of the splendour of man crowned with power—man triumphant, mighty, kingly and dominant. For in the past few hours Taori had changed from the passionate boy to a man fit to be the ruler of men.
Holding her from him for a moment, his head drawn back like the head of a cobra, he consumed her with his eyes.
Then he struck, crushing her with his arms, his lips to her lips, her throat, her breast, whilst the full-flooding sea shook the coral with its thunder and the gulls in great circles swung chanting above the haze of the spray.
As the sea touched the horizon, pouring its gold across the outgoing tide, Katafa, turning from her lover and sweeping the sea with her eyes, saw floating far above the northern sky-line something that was not cloud, that was not land, that was not sea. The ghost of an island, lonely and illusive as the land where in his dream Lestrange had met his vanished children.
Palm Tree, far lifted above all things earthly—by mirage.
THE END