“Not until Warnock here——” began Grey, but he stopped as he turned towards his wife, for, as was natural, my words had moved her greatly. She now stood looking at Crystal with a tender light of motherhood on her gentle face.
“My darling child!” she said slowly and hesitatingly, as if still unable to comprehend it.
“My own mother!” cried Crystal quickly—she had no hesitation in the matter—and, like a bird, she flew to, and nestled in, her mother’s arms. And they stood for a moment in a close embrace.
Crystal held back her head, and, smoothing her mother’s glossy locks away from her brow, looked at her lovingly, saying with a sweet repetition:
“Mother! Mother! Mother! My own mother!”
As Miriam Grey looked again on the lovely face so near to hers, and saw the dark eyes gazing into her own, there came once more the expression of bewilderment and awe which I had seen at their first meeting in the Place-of-Many-Chambers. Could she not account for this perfect likeness to the stone, as I had done? Surely she did not think that Hinauri’s ancient spirit had come back in the flesh?
No sooner were these questions asked in my mind than they were answered in a way that mystified me. As the look of awe deepened on the mother’s face she spoke in hushed tones:
“I saw your image in the stone before I was a mother. ‘Out of the distant past I will come to you,’ you said, as you held out your arms to me from the stone. Is it possible that the ancient prophecy is fulfilled in this way?—that you are Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, who has returned according to her promise, out of the distant past? O dear and lovely one, your eyes gaze down on me from the beginning of the world.”
Crystal seemed to be attaching her mother’s words to the feelings of which she had once spoken to me—the feelings of a “long, long ago,” hidden in some inmost tomb of memory. She was silent; but I, not willing to admit this thing by my silence, and moreover, having another explanation, spoke my thoughts.
I said: “That Crystal is your daughter is beyond doubt; but it seems to me that in the matter of the perfect likeness there is an explanation other than the one of which you speak. Of two marvels we must choose the less. My explanation is this: you yourself created an image which, in moments of deep concentration, you saw as if within the stone. Then, as day by day you visualised it more clearly, striving to give it visible shape in the marble, your desire was realised not only on the lifeless stone, but also on the face and form of your unborn child. Your idea was made stone, why not flesh?”