Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/259

 eyes, turn, and see if you cannot get a view again of where Karolin lies; is the sight of it still gone from you, Le Moan?”

“It is still gone,” she had answered him, “and even if it were with me, of what use, for there is no wind?”

She had told the lie looking him in the face and seeing only Taori.

It was no little jealousy that made her lie; she had no jealousy towards Katafa whom Fate had bound to Taori before she had seen him. He had not chosen Katafa in preference to her; perhaps that was why her heart held no jealousy. All the same to bring him back, to take the wheel and steer him into the arms of Katafa—she could not.

To save his life she could easily have died for him, to give him back to joy and love was impossible.

The night passed and the sun rose on another day of calm, and still the schooner drifted, the variable current setting her back sometimes, sometimes leading her a bit more south. Truly it was a great calm as Aioma had predicted and it fell on Taori, as on the sea, like the hand of death. He scarcely ate at all; he had fallen away from himself, his mind seemed far away, he scarcely spoke.

As men who have never met the microbes of disease fall easily victims and die when other men only fall ill, Taori, who had never before known grief, in the language of Aioma, turned his face from the sun.

On Karolin men had often died like that, of no disease—because of insult, because of a woman, some-