Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/201

 could kill so well and fight so bravely had never tired of them as playthings, playthings sometimes used in play, sometimes forgotten, but always remembered again. Then they were more than that; who can tell how much more, for who can see into the subliminal mind or tell what dim ghosts hiding in the under mind of Dick were connected with these things—Kearney surely, Lestrange and the men of the Rarotonga, perhaps. Palm Tree and his life on that enchanted island, certainly.

It was as though Fate, in taking his toys, had cut a cord attaching him to his past and the last remnant of civilization. How completely the hand of Fate had done its work he was yet to know.

The stars showed through the momentary gauze of dusk, and then blazed out over a world of night.

Le Moan, who had refused a mat, was nowhere to be seen. She had slunk away into the tree shadows, where, sitting with her back to a tree bole, she could, unobserved, see the reef and the figure of Dick seated brooding, Katafa's form on the mat where she had lain down to wait for Dick, the foam lifting in the starlight and the sea stars beyond the foam.

What the cassi flowers had said still lingered in the mind of Le Moan.

In that mind so simple, so subtle, so indefinite, so wildly strong, had grown since the night before an energy, calm, patient, sure of itself: a power so large and certain that the thought of Katafa did not even stir jealousy; a passion that could not reason but yet