The final touch was too much for poor Muriel’s overwrought nerves.  She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence.

Instantly, as she did so, the whole assembly seemed to change its mind again as if by contagious magic.  A loud shout of “She cries; the Queen of the Clouds cries!” went up from all the assembled mob to heaven.  “It is a good omen,” Toko, the Shadow, whispered in Polynesian to Felix, seeing his puzzled look.  “We shall have plenty of rain now; the clouds will break; our crops will flourish.”  Almost before she understood it, Muriel was surrounded by an eager and friendly crowd, still afraid to draw near, but evidently anxious to see and to comfort and console her.  Many of the women eagerly held forward their native mats, which Mali took from them, and, pressing them for a second against Muriel’s eyes, handed them back with just a suspicion of wet tears left glistening in the corner.  The happy recipients leaped and shouted with joy.  “No more drought!” they cried merrily, with loud shouts and gesticulations.  “The Queen of the Clouds is good:  she will weep well from heaven upon my yam and taro plots!”

Muriel looked up, all dazed, and saw, to her intense surprise, the crowd was now nothing but affection and sympathy.  Slowly they gathered in closer and closer, till they almost touched the hem of her robe; then the men stood by respectfully, laying their fingers on whatever she had wetted with her tears, while the women and girls took her hand in theirs and pressed it sympathetically.  Mali explained their meaning with ready interpretation.  “No cry too much, them say,” she observed, nodding her head sagely.  “Not good for Missy Queenie to cry too much.  Them say, kind lady, be comforted.”

There was genuine good-nature in the way they consoled her; and Felix was touched by the tenderness of those savage hearts; but the additional explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy.  “They say, ’It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,’” Toko said, with frank bluntness; “’but not too much—­for fear the rain should wash away all our yam and taro plants.’”

By this time the little bride had roused herself from her stupor, and, smiling away as if nothing had happened, said a few words in a very low voice to Felix’s Shadow.  The Shadow turned most respectfully to his master, and, touching his sleeve-link, which was of bright gold, said, in a very doubtful voice, “She asks you, oh king, will you allow her, just for to-day, to wear this ornament?”

Felix unbuttoned the shining bauble at once, and was about to hand it to the bride with polite gallantry.  “She may wear it forever, for the matter of that, if she likes,” he said, good-humoredly.  “I make her a present of it.”