Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/166

 white road of the beaches and the reef. She followed the leading of this road with little more volition than the wind-blown leaf or the drifting weed; with only one desire, to be alone.

It led to the great trees where the canoe-builders had been at work. Here across the coral lay the trunks felled by Aioma, filling the air with the fragrance of new-cut wood. One already had been partly shaped and hollowed, and resting on it for a moment, Le Moan followed its curves with her eyes, felt the ax marks with her hand, took in every detail of the work, saw it as, with outrigger affixed and sail spread to the wind, it would take the sea, sometime—sometime—sometime.

The ceaseless breakers casting their spindrift beneath the moon lulled her mind for a moment till trees, canoe, reef and sea all faded and dissolved in a world of sound, a voice-world through which came the chanting of stricken coral and, at last, pictures of the wind-blown southern beach.

The southern beach, sunlit and gull-flown, a beached canoe, a form—Taori.

It was now and now only that the pain came, piercing soul and rending body, crushing her and breaking her till she fell on the coral, her face buried in her arms, as though cast there by the sea whose eternal thunder filled the night.

The night wind moved her hair. It was blowing from the village and as it came it brought with it a vague whisper from the bushes and trees and now