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 more, the world she had known before she tore her heart out.

Taori was going to die. And the heart she had torn out was back again and the love that had filled it.

Taori was going to die—to die as the others had died and as surely, and as certainly through her who had brought this curse on Karolin and through whom the hand of Le Juan was still striking.

So great was the power of this thought that it fought with and overcame the passionate desire to fling herself on her knees beside him and take him in her arms; so great was its power that it almost drove the thought of him away before the crowding recollections it brought up of her own disastrous history in which she had brought evil to everyone. To Peterson, to Rantan, to Carlin, to Poni, to Tahuku—Tirai, all whom she had touched or come in contact with. To Aioma—and lastly to Taori.

Taori is going to die—Ai amasu Taori—the wind sighed it above him, it came mixed with the sobbing of Katafa and the voice of the beach with the rumbling voice of Taori himself, talking, talking, talking, as he wandered on the reef of memory with Kearney in a land that knew not Katafa.

Ai amasu Taori—and she dared not bid him goodbye; to save him she must go, leave him untouched, for the net of Le Juan was not yet torn, nor the spears of Uta blunted.

Even to look at him was fatal, yet she could not tear her eyes away.