Page:Iracéma, the honey-lips (1886).djvu/40

The youth turned towards her. His lip was silent, but his eyes spoke. One tear coursed down his manly cheek, like the drops which during the summer heat trickle over the scarped rock.

Cauby walked on and disappeared in the dense foliage.

The bosom of Araken՚s daughter heaved like the overflowing billow fringed with surf, and she sobbed aloud. But in her soul, so dark with sorrow, burned a faint spark which lit up her cheeks. Thus in the blackness of night a firedrake glimmers over the white sands of the high-land plateau.

"Stranger, take the last smile of Iraçéma—and fly!"

The warrior caught her in his arms and placed his lips to hers. They were as twin fruits of the Araça^[1] shrub, both sprung from the womb of the same flower.

The voice of Cauby called the stranger by name, and Iraçéma remained clinging for support to the trunk of a palm.

In the silent wigwam meditates the old Pagé.

Iraçéma leans against the rugged trunk that serves as a stay. Her large black eyes, fixed on the forest clearings, and sunk with sorrow, gaze with long and tremulous looks, threading and unthreading the seed-pearl of teardrops that bedew her cheeks.

The Ará, perched on the opposite shelf, views with sad green eyes her beautiful lady.

From the day that saw the white warrior tread Tabajára land she had been forgotten by Iraçéma. The rosy lips of the maid never opened now to let