“Bartow,” she said, and there was that softened light in her wild eyes that had appeared there while she was singing the tender lullaby that Bartow’s wife had crooned to Bonny, “this is where you sleep while you remain with Sobrinini on her island. Good-night, Bartow, or Bartow’s ghost, and pleasant dreams!”
Then she turned and, noiselessly as a ghost or a shadow, glided from the room.
Bomba stood where she had left him, motionless.
What was that strange feeling that made his heart swell within him until he could not bear the pain of it, that made him reach out wildly, beseechingly, for some vague, beautiful thing that he had never known, or only dimly remembered?
What was it that suddenly made him feel his loneliness and desolation more keenly than he had ever felt it in his life, as though he had been given for a moment a glimpse of something warm and friendly and sweet, only to have the curtain fall again and leave him in his solitude, more utterly alone than he had ever been before?
What was it that drew him haltingly, almost fearfully, across the tiny room to stop beneath a picture on the wall and, with his hungry eyes upraised, stare at it intently?
Bomba could not tell. He only knew that within him there was a growing tumult of emotions, fear, hope, doubt, and a longing so fierce that it was pain.
Into the jungle lad’s upturned, pleading face the beautiful eyes in the picture looked steadily and gravely down. It was a lovely face, girlish and sweet, with soft hair waved back from a broad, low forehead and with eyes one knew were soft and dark. The lips turned up at the corners, half-smiling.
Bomba had never seen that beautiful pictured face before, as far as he could remember. Then how was it that those great eyes looking into his, those sweet lips parted as though to speak to him, touched a chord in him that had never before resounded, and increased a thousandfold his longing for that vague and beautiful thing that he had never known?
She was even fairer than the woman with the golden hair. Yes, much more fair and sweet.