For some seconds no one stirred, and during that time I, grasping at the matter-of-fact, cast about for an explanation of this strange thing. Instantly there rolled through my mind that time when, before Crystal was born, Miriam Grey worked at the stone, absorbed in the contemplation of the vision she had seen—the vision of Hinauri. Was it possible that her work had been twofold? that, while her whole being, with all the concentrative power one might read in her eyes, was absorbed in contemplation of the beautiful image of her imagination, she had “found” that image at once actually in the marble and potentially in her unborn child? Kahikatea was right, but only half right, for the mother who had conceived the beauty of Hinauri in the stone had also conceived her wondrous image in the flesh.
Then came the same dull roar that we had heard from beneath the rimu in the valley, thundering down from the roof of the mountain above us. Crystal heard it, and as she raised her face I saw the love-light leap into her eyes and a radiant smile spread over her face. I saw her lips move, and the unspoken word seemed to fall like lead upon my heart: “Kahikatea!”
I turned my face away and laid my cheek against the marble wall. There was nothing between them now.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE TALISMAN.
Miriam Grey moved out of the shadows into the daylight that flooded in through the opening of the cave and paused by Grey’s side, while they both gazed and marvelled at the wondrous thing that was now made clear.
“It is Crystal herself,” said Grey, when he had partly recovered from his astonishment.
“Crystal!” cried his wife quickly; “that was our daughter’s name, but I tell you, dear, she died; she was drowned, and Te Makawawa himself buried her. I will call him and he will tell you the same.”
She went to the top of the marble steps and called, but there was no answer. The aged chief who would face warriors, even if they covered the whole earth, had now clearly fled to avoid either facing the woman with the stars in her eyes, or confronting a matter through which he did not see his way clear.
As he had obviously left me to tell the tale of his deception, perchance of his sin against the Bright One, I gathered my thoughts together and went forward.
“Miriam Grey,” I said, “when first I undertook the search for you, Te Makawawa told me the story of the child, which, of course, you know up to the point where he took the little body away to bury it beneath the rimu. The part of the story he kept from you is this. Your child Crystal revived in his arms; he did not bury her but sent her away with a band of Maoris, whose instructions were to leave her with the first pakeha they met. The first white man they found was your husband, who, nevertheless, up to a month ago did not know she was his own daughter.”