It was before dawn—a dark and heavy hour, with the stars just dimming and a light wind in the jungle. Stella was asleep, dreaming: she seemed to be out on the rocks of the shore, where she and Ferdinand had sat enriching the sunset with their wonderful projections. She saw it all in her dream so vividly: the rocky promontory, the sunny sea beyond, and had a sense, as one does in dreams, of something about to happen. The white beach below shimmered in the glare of a vacant sky. In her dream she felt the strange spell of the silence, made manifold. It held her breathless and she waited, full of wonder. Presently as she gazed across the slumbering sea, a great ship came into view—was it this for which the breath of premonition had prepared her? She gazed, and the ship seemed coming straight on, like an enchanted ship. Her heart stirred with delight.
Abruptly, however, Stella awoke, with a sharp pang of fear and sat up in bed, trembling. Something like a wild cry seemed to have broken her dream. She heard it again, though fainter through the woven fastness of the jungle: the cry of some great night bird, a note so sinister and full of lamentation that her brow grew a little damp with the terror of her rousing. Yet in a moment she was calm.
Her husband lay beside her, quietly sleeping. She listened to his regular breathing in the dark, then lay down and closed her eyes. Gradually the silence drew her back into a state of drowsiness. She slept.
When she woke again the dark was gone and the sun stood high.
Slipping from bed and into an adjoining room of her strange new dwelling, Stella lighted a small oil stove and started a kettle of water for their coffee. Returned to the bedroom, she arrayed herself in a bit of frilled and beribboned negligée and a lacy boudoir cap: small extravagancies of the unambitious shopping tours preceding her wedding. Adorned in these luxuries, she sat before her improvised dressing table to begin a rather elaborate toilette.
Stella had done all she could with the primitive conditions surrounding her here. The dressing table was fashioned out of an empty packing case, covered with some old flowered goods. A small mirror hung above it, and on either side were cheap little bracket candle-holders with coloured candles that had begun to nod under the hot breath of the tropics. She had pictured herself in a boudoir rather more authentic; but for the present this one would do very well.
She sat absorbed in the pleasant task of making herself attractive. Ferdinand still slept, but was beginning to stir. Even in bed, relaxed and disheveled with sleep, he looked like a god; and Stella, glancing over at him, felt more than ever inspired to make herself beautiful. She must hold his love, she mused—and even tinted her cheeks a little.
King yawned and turn............