– How long ago was it? – The girl asked. But having noticed that he frowned, she added: – You may not answer if you don’t want to.
– I forgot when it happened and don’t want to recall, – he replied sharply. – And don’t look at me so accusingly!
– I don’t accuse you, – she said quietly.
– But I see a mute reproach in your eyes.
– You are mistaken. My eyes are mute.
– No, they are very eloquent! Your eyes… – the boy got silent, not having finished, and his pale cheeks ware flashing. Suddenly, he exclaimed surprisingly: – How could not I notice that before! Your eyes!
– What about my eyes?
– Their glistening is the same as the light of that star. Aren’t you her sister? Where did you come from?
– I don’t know, – the girl replied honestly. – I have always been here.
– Who are your mother and father?
– I don’t know.
– Who are you?
– I am myself.
– And you have never wanted to know all that?
– No. Why?
– Oh, you are right. Why should one know all that? I wanted to know – and it has brought me just sorrow and alienation from the rest of the world. We were both born by the same mysterious energy. You are the same child of nature as I am, but you are happy and I am not. Probably, nature was mother to you, and stepmother to me…
A parrot flew into the hut, saying good morning to everyone. It was followed by the first morning sunrays, penetrating into the hut through the roof. The girl patted the parrot tenderly, opened the window and got the bird out of it, saying to someone:
–
Farewell!
Without looking back she came out of the hut. She was leaving at dawn, as she promised. The boy realized it too late, that she would never come back. He came out of the hut and hurried to the shore where he saw a raft with a waiving sail dashing through the wind and ocean. The raft was so far away by the moment, that it looked like a tiny dot on the horizon, where the ocean was touching the sky. And there was not such a voice in the whole world, which could reach her now.
The boy was standing on the shore staring, either at the ocean depth, or at the abyss of his loneliness, suddenly revealed in front of him. When he awoke from his thoughts, the horizon was clear. A lonely seagull was drawing some unknown signs on the water with its wings. The tiny footsteps on the sand leading to the ocean have disappeared, washed away by the waves.
– Haven’t you helped her to set a mast with your own hands? – the boy asked himself.
