Part 2

For a moment, as they stood, all things were shattered around them; everything wiped away but themselves, and their minds sprang back to the point of anger as a bow springs back to the straight, and who knows what might have happened between these two, but at that moment from the great building there came a howl like the voice of the whole city howling out in pain because of its own desolation.

It was the voice of the horn that is blown at midday for the work people, and as Tauti and Uliami looked round them in fear and wonder it seemed to them the voice of the dust, and the high walls and the streets, and the rubbish on the ground, and the hard-faced people on the foot walks. When it ceased, and they faced one another again, they were no longer alone, for that voice had reached Tilafeaa, and the high woods had come trooping to its call right across the sea, and they were standing as they had stood when they parted last in the company of the trees and amid the beauty of the flowers, and all anger had passed from their hearts where there was nothing now but the grief of exile and love.

Surely that was magic greater than the magic of the pictures that move, or the machines that speak, and surely places are the true gods that rule over man, for the voice of the city had brought an island from a thousand leagues away, and the island had brought love to Tauti and Uliami.

No man could have reconciled these two.

But Tauti died. Before ever he could get back to Tilafeaa a fever took him. It was many years ago.

I am Uliami.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 7, 1920 issue of The Popular Magazine.]