“Yes; I believe I shall meet him some day.” A light chased the sadness from her eyes—a light like that of a star when night is darkest.
“But you rejected the idea that the vile one, whose face you have pictured, had any original on earth—why deny to the one what you grant to the other?”
“I do not fear the vile one enough to believe in him, but my love for the other compels belief.”
“It is a phantom of the brain,” I urged on hearing this. “What proof have you that it is the presentment of a living man?”
“None, except a strange feeling I have in regard to it.”
I was silent for a little. I felt an uncompromising belief in her strange feelings.
“Listen, Wanaki,” she said after a pause. “You told me of a man who saw his heart’s desire depicted in a sculptured stone, and when you spoke of his love I said I quite understood it. I meant that his love was similar to mine: he loved the ideal woman—I love the ideal man.”
I bent my brows and tacitly admitted the similarity.
“Tell me what he is like,” I said presently, “so that I may try to understand.”
She placed her hand within the bosom of her dress and drew forth a cameo attached to a golden chain.