“I had no option,” replied a man’s voice, which I knew to be Grey’s; “but I did not wholly forget. Many times in the day and night a strange reminiscence of a tender face flitted across my memory like the face of an angel I might have seen long ago in dreams. They called me ‘Dreamer Grey,’ because at odd times I would stop in what I was saying or doing, and look into the air, trying to follow this fleeting glimpse which was all I knew of some forgotten heaven. But, as I told you just now, the memory of these intervening years is fading away, and I recall these things but dimly. It is beginning to seem but yesterday when I came with you a prisoner to this place. Strange—but I almost think that soon those eighteen years without you will be crowded out, and I shall take up my life again where I left it off—my old life and my old love for you, dear.”
The voice ceased and a happy sigh, breathed all about the one word “Husband!” fell upon my ears. It dismissed the faint, far-off wailings that came from the interior of the mountain; it swept away even the consciousness that I was playing the part of a paltry listener. When this did occur to me some time later the lump that had risen in my throat, and the mist that had gathered in my eyes seemed to take away the paltriness of my part.
Again the sigh, again the tender word as the happy wife replied: “When you saw my face it was when I, too, paused in what I was doing or woke from sleep and stretched out my arms to you. Oh! how I have loved you night and day through all these long years of my imprisonment, and now we are together again, never to be sep——”
The voice stopped, arrested perhaps by some sudden doubt.
“What is it, dearest?”
“You told me just now”—her words had a ring of pain in them—“that your old memory was coming back and the intervening years were slipping away.”
“Yes, they are almost gone. It seems as if some powerful hand is slackening its hold on my brain, and long-forgotten memories are flooding in and taking up their old places. Even now the eighteen years is a mere blank covered with flitting dreams.”
As I listened I remembered the aged chief’s words concerning the spell he had cast over Grey, and a strange thought came to me. I said within my breath, “Te Makawawa is dying. His aged face is turned to the golden west. Soon the lights of heaven will come out in the depths of the sky; soon the eyes of the great chiefs gazing down to see what noble needs are done among mortals will be opened, and Te Makawawa’s eye will shine there—a new star.”
But Miriam Grey spoke again, and her voice was like a moan of pain.
“Dear husband, tell me—I did not think of it before—and forgive me for thinking of it now—but when you forgot me—forgot that—that you ever had a wife, dear—did you—was there anyone——”