“Where my mother is,” she broke in eagerly.
“Where Hinauri stands,” I said slowly. “Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, the Bright One who holds her arms out to the future of the world—Hinauri, whom he loves.”
Crystal moved her eyes slightly from mine. Was it a flash of jealousy or only pain that I saw in them as she steadfastly regarded a clump of daisies in the moss?
“He is mine!” she said suddenly, with a fierce blaze of passion that lighted her face as if with fire; “no one can take him from me—oh! what am I saying to you?—you, to whom I owe everything in the world: you, whom I would spare any pain—oh! forgive me, Wanaki!” The sudden fire, which in the depths of her eyes was like a threatening light flashed out of ancient darkness, concealed itself, leaving her face full of tenderness beyond my poor power of words.
I did not speak.
“Tell me,” she said again, swept on by the tide of her feelings, “tell me—if he believed this marble statue would return to life, according to the legend, would he love it in the same way as—as——”
“As I love you?” I suggested.
“Yes—as you—love—me.” She cast her eyes down, halting between the words as if she were measuring their exact meaning and influence upon her.
There was a brief pause, in which I felt like a man who, in some underground prison, can see daylight through a far small opening, and stumbles towards it. But it was no time for any but a fool to stand and think.
“Yes,” I said; “there is a personal element in his love for this legendary woman. Her face is the only face in the world for him, and he longs to look upon the fair form of the Bright One. When at last he does so, and touches the cold marble lips with his——”