“It will be terrible if you do not, Maisie, for I have lived to be too thoroughly understood—I who am not worth understanding.”
CHAPTER XXXI
When the last sunlight faded from the earth and the sea and the swift tropic twilight had swallowed the Pelorus, Tamea cast herself upon the earth and beat it with her beautiful hands, sobbing aloud, in the language of her mother’s people, the agony of her broken heart. Upon her the gods had rained the supreme blow and she could no longer stand erect and take it smiling. Upon the pungent, fetid earth she groveled in her despair until, utterly spent, she lay like a beautiful wilted lily, an occasional long, constricted gasp alone giving evidence that she still lived—and suffered.
After a long time a voice spoke in the semi-darkness.
“Tamea! Stoneface is speaking.”
The girl started up. “Mellengair! You have not gone?”
“Did I not tell you once, Tamea, that I loved you? That when you too were a Stoneface, with your flower face in the dust, I would love you more than ever, because your child’s heart would have been broken? And did I not tell you that I would lift you up and hold you to my heart and comfort you? Behold, Tamea, these hands outthrust to you.” And with the words he lifted her from the ground and held her against his great breast. “Poor child!” he kept murmuring, and stroked her hair.
“Oh, why did you stay?” she sobbed. “I do not love you, Mel. You are to me a true friend only.”
“I do not ask for love, Tamea,” he replied gently. “I seek service. I thought I would stay until your baby should be born—it seemed I ought to wait awhile and see that all goes well with you, child.”
“My race is dying. I too shall die, and that soon. Life has lost its taste, and when my baby has been born—my friend, when such as we have lost our taste for life, life departs. We do not live for the coward’s love of life, but for life’s joys.”