Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/294

 herself on the sands, the lagoon before her and on the lagoon the schooner bravely sailing in the sunset blaze, the sails full and now shivering as, curving to her anchorage, the wind left them and the rumble of the anchor chain running out came across the water, rousing her to the fact that what she saw could not be, that what she saw was a ship, but not the ship that had taken Taori away, the ship she had watched and waited for till hope was all but dead and life all but darkness. It could not be. It could not be that she should return like this, so sure, so quietly, so real, the dream ship that held her heart and soul, her love, her very life.

The boat putting off now was a phantom, surely, and Taori as he sprang on the sands and seized her in his embrace was unreal as the world fading around her, till his lips seized her up from twilight to the heaven of assurance.

“Taori has come back,” cried the women, forgetting him as they turned to the men who were standing by the boat—unheeding Le Moan who stood, her work done, a being uncaring, seeing nothing, not even Kanoa, crouched on the sands half dead with the beatitude of the vision before him.