"
At his solicitation I followed around the house, past the gun-room
window (locked fast enough now, you may be sure), and up steeply through
a hedged, immaculate garden, which witnessed to the ordered quality of
the owner's mind. At the upper end, under a wall of volcanic tufa, we
came to a summerhouse done in the native style, stilts below, palmite
thatch above, and walled on three sides only with hanging screens of
bamboo. Striking through this screen from the west, the rose and green
of the afterglow showed the woman as in a semi-luminous cavern, seated
cross-legged in the center of the platform, her hands drooped between
her knees, and her large, dark eyes fixed upon the sea beyond the roof
of the Residence below.
Was it the perfect immobility of defiance and disdain? Not once did her
transfixed gaze take us in. Was it the quiescence of defeat and
despair--that level brooding over the ocean which had been to her, first
and last, a cradle and roadway for her far, adventurious pilgrimages?
She sat there before our peering eyes, the sudden widow, the daughter of
potentates brought low, the goddess of an exuberant and passionate
vitality struck with quietude; mute, astounded by catastrophe, yet
unbowed. The beauty of that golden-skinned woman abashed me.
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