I paused there with my eyes searching her face. My words had roused the natural woman in her. Between her parted lips I saw the pearly teeth set, as the colour fled from her cheeks. Clenching her hands, she turned to me with flashing eyes that had robbed her face of life, but not of a beauty that now was terrible in its anger.
“Do not tell me any more,” she said. “Oh! if my love should come to a blind end!” She drooped her head and was silent, mightily troubled in her bosom.
“What would you do?” I asked quietly.
She looked up and faced me calmly, but did not speak.
“Crystal,” I cried, seizing her hand and pressing it passionately to my lips, “may I hope that if—if——”
“Ah! Wanaki,” she said slowly and sadly, “I owe you everything in the world. I do not know what a woman will do. I never knew till now that it was possible I should feel as I have felt. Oh! tell me—is Hinauri so very beautiful?”
“They call her the Rival of the Dawn,” I said, releasing her hand as she drew it away.
“The Rival of the Dawn,” she echoed with a pathetic ring in her voice; “Kahikatea loves the Rival of the Dawn; I, who am nothing in his eyes, love Kahikatea; and you——”
“Yes, I, who am nothing in your eyes, love you.”
There was a pause, in which the west wind pressed gently against the bosom of the rimu, and the tui sang on in the high solitude of the ravine.