Page:Iracéma, the honey-lips (1886).djvu/108

chose wives, and begot in their turn numerous off-spring. Araken had but two children of his old age. Iraçéma is for him like the dove which the hunter has stolen from its nest. Alone remains with the old Pagé the warrior Cauby, to sustain his bent frame and to guide his tremulous steps."

"Cauby will depart when the shade shall leave the face of Iraçéma. As lives the night-star, so lives Iraçéma in her sorrow. Only the eyes of her husband can banish the darkness from her brow. Go, in order that his sight may not wax dim at the sight of Cauby!"

"Iraçéma՚s brother will depart to please her, but he will return every time the Cajueiro flowers to feel in his heart the child of her bosom."

He entered the cabin. Iraçéma took the child from the hammock, and both mother and son remained pressed to the heart of Cauby. He then passed through the door, and soon disappeared amid the trees.

Iraçéma, dragging along her trembling steps, accompanied him for some distance, till he was lost to sight on the skirts of the forest. Then she stopped; when the cry of the Jandáia, accompanied by the infant՚s wail, recalled her to the cabin; only the cold sand upon which she had sat, kept the secret of the tears which it had drank.

The young mother gave her child the breast, but the babe՚s moan was not hushed. The scanty milk refused to flow.

The blood of the unhappy girl had been thinned by the ever-flowing tears of which her eyes had not wearied, and none came to her bosom, where the first nourishment of life is formed.

She dissolved the white Cariman^[1] and prepared