“Honestly,” I said as I drew near to examine it, “I do not see why a mere face should carry such conviction with it. And why,” I added to myself, as she unfastened the chain and placed the cameo in my hand, “why should a mere dream face, an unsubstantial vision of the brain stand between me and——”
There I paused, for my glance had fallen upon the face which I had just assured Crystal was a phantom of the brain.
Heavens! It was the face of my friend Kahikatea! The lofty, massive forehead, surrounded by his orderly-disorderly mane, his brows slightly bent with thought, his nostrils dilated in the way I knew so well, his lips set firm with purpose, and his eyes, full of his inexplicable love, gazing into space and slightly raised, as if to some distant mountain top—this was the picture of my friend, even down to his short brown beard and moustache—this was the man whom Crystal loved, yet had never seen in the flesh. His look recalled the moment, when, by the false grave beneath the great rimu, I asked him to come with me to search for Crystal, and he replied that he had hitched his waggon to a star, that he had made up his mind to search for Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, and would not turn aside to look for the daughter of a mortal woman.
As I gazed in silence at the face of my friend, a wicked lie rose up out of the ashes of my heart, and threatened to gain the mastery. Then I looked up and met Crystal’s eyes burning into mine, and felt my love leap up again and light the way through the dark. Thoughts crowded tumultuously through my brain, and clearest of all was the thought that Kahikatea, worshipping his ideal as depicted in the image of Hinauri, had renounced all other women, Crystal among them. Therefore it would be cruel to tell her that she was in exactly the same position as I was.
I said, “I have the same feeling about it as you have, I will regard it as the face of a living man. It is my love tells you this from the centre of my heart, for my love for you is the grandest thing I have ever known. But what should you do if, when you meet him in the flesh, you find that his love is given to another?”
“I do not know,” she replied slowly, “but my heart tells me I should be plunged into the dark.”
“But what if you found, as I have found with you, that he loves an abstraction—something less real than yourself——”
She looked up quickly. “You mean if he was like your friend, who loves the ideal woman in marble?”
Before I could reply, and while she regarded me attentively, I felt my eyelids flutter together as if the light were too strong. Then I said, “Yes, supposing he were like that friend of mine—would you despair?”
“I should not attempt to stand between him and his ideal,” she replied decisively.