Page:Iracéma, the honey-lips (1886).djvu/31

Behold! he returns to his native land. He kisses his aged mother. He sees the pure angel of his boyish love, more beautiful and more tender than before.

Then why, hardly returned to his native home, does the young warrior again abandon his father՚s roof and seek the desert?

Now he crosses the forests; now he arrives at the plains of the Ipú. He seeks in the forest the daughter of the Pagé. He follows the slight trail of the coy virgin, incessantly sighing forth her sweet name to the breeze:—

"Iraçéma ! Iraçéma !" . . .

Now he finds her, and winds his arm round her sweet form.

The young girl, yielding to the warm pressure, hides her face upon the warrior՚s bosom, and trembles there like a timid partridge when its tender mate ruffles with the beak its delicate plume.

The warrior more than once sighed forth her name, and sobbed as though to summon another loving lip. Iraçéma felt her soul escaping to merge itself in a fiery kiss.

And his brow bent low, and already the flower of her smile hung down as though calling to be culled.

Suddenly the virgin trembled. Quickly disengaging herself from the arm that encircled her, she seized her bow.

Iraçéma threaded the trees silent as a shade; her sparkling eyes pierced through the foliage like star-beams. She listened to the profound silence of the night and inhaled the balm-blowing breeze.

She stopped. A shadow glided amongst the