From her place amidst the trees where Le Moan had settled herself like a hare in its forme she heard the silky whisper of the sands and the voice of the beach and the wind in the leaves above bidding her to listen.
Far-away voices came from the mammee apple where the men of the schooner and their wives were making merry, and now and then, the faintest thing in the world of sound, a click and creak from Nan on his post above the house where Taori lay in the arms of Katafa.
To Le Moan all that was nothing. She had banded death in exchange for Taori, all her interest in life, all her desires. She had not even the desire to destroy herself. The fire that had been her life burned low and smouldered; it would never blaze again.
“Listen!” said the wind.
Something moved amidst the trees—it was Kanoa: Kanoa, his heart beating against his ribs, his hands outstretched touching the tree boles.
She saw him now as he came towards her like a phantom from the star-showered night, and she knew why he came, nor did she move as he dropped on his knees beside her—all that was nothing now to Le Moan.
Since the night when he had saved her from Rantan, he had been closer to her than the other men of the schooner, but still only a figure, almost an abstraction.
To-night, now, he was a little more than that, as a dog might be to a lonely person, and as he poured out his heart in whispers she listened without replying, let him put his arm around her and take her lips; all that was nothing now to her whose heart would never quicken again.
The wind died, day broke, and the wind of morning blew.
Joy and the sun leapt on Karolin. Joy for Katafa who came from the house to look at a world renewed, for the women whose husbands had returned, for the men, for the children. Joy for Kanoa, his soul shouting in him, “She is mine, she is mine,” and for Aioma, the lust of revenge and destruction alive and dancing in his heart.