Muriel crouched there long, in the mute misery of utter despair.  At her feet Mali crouched too, as frightened as herself, but muttering aloud from time to time, in a reproachful voice, “I tell Missy Queenie what going to happen.  I warn her not.  I tell her she must not eat that very bad storm-apple.  But Missy Queenie no listen.  Her take her own way, then storm come down upon us.”

And Felix’s Shadow, in his own tongue, exclaimed more than once in the self-same tone, half terror, half expostulation, “See now what comes from breaking taboo?  You eat the storm-fruit.  The storm-fruit suits ill with the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds.  The heavens have broken loose.  The sea has boiled.  See what wind and what flood you are bringing upon us.”

By and by, above even the fierce roar of the mingled thunder and cyclone, a wild orgy of noise burst upon them all from without the hut.  It was a sound as of numberless drums and tom-toms, all beaten in unison with the mad energy of fear; a hideous sound, suggestive of some hateful heathen devil-worship.  Muriel clapped her hands to her ears in horror.  “Oh, what’s that?” she cried to Felix, at this new addition to their endless alarms.  “Are the savages out there rising in a body?  Have they come to murder us?”

“Perhaps,” Felix said, smoothing her hair with his hand, as a mother might soothe her terrified child, “perhaps they’re angry with us for having caused this storm, as they think, by our foolish action.  I believe they all set it down to our having unluckily eaten that unfortunate fruit.  I’ll go out to the door myself and speak to them.”

Muriel clung to his arm with a passionate clinging.

“Oh, Felix,” she cried, “no!  Don’t leave me here alone.  My darling, I love you.  You’re all the world there is left to me now, Felix.  Don’t go out to those wretches and leave me here alone.  They’ll murder you! they’ll murder you!  Don’t go out, I implore you.  If they mean to kill us, let them kill us both together, in one another’s arms.  Oh, Felix, I am yours, and you are mine, my darling!”

It was the first time either of them had acknowledged the fact; but there, before the face of that awful convulsion of nature, all the little deceptions and veils of life seemed rent asunder forever as by a flash of lightning.  They stood face to face with each other’s souls, and forgot all else in the agony of the moment.  Felix clasped the trembling girl in his arms like a lover.  The two Shadows looked on and shook with silent terror.  If the King of the Rain thus embraced the Queen of the Clouds before their very eyes, amid so awful a storm, what unspeakable effects might not follow at once from it!  But they had too much respect for those supernatural creatures to attempt to interfere with their action at such a moment.  They accepted their masters almost as passively as they accepted the wind and the thunder, which they believed to arise from them.