Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/313

301 after all his ill-starred wanderings. But—he had looked into the dark eyes and pure face of a girl, and another fairy tale, a very real one, was swiftly spun, there by the sands of the shining sea.

As for the girl, she did not realize what had happened. How could she? Like all good women, and many whom the world calls bad, she was quickly sensible to the appeal of misfortune, especially when so bravely borne as by this gallant Frenchman. She liked him better than anyone she had ever known on so short an acquaintance, and she felt—at home with him.

Perhaps—if Fate had cast them together on this island three years before—but that is a gambling in sentiment, a speculation on margin that benefits no one. Her love for her sailor sweetheart had not been like the river that had sprung full-grown in the stranger's heart, as swiftly as great streams were born when the earth was still young and in the throes of adolescence.

It had been like a mountain-rill's, in a later and well-ordered age, separated by a strip of green forest from its companion stream. Side by side they flow on in playful friendship, singing to each other as they go, until the silver threads of rills become swift running brooks, and then, swiftly dancing down the mountainside, they change to deep-flowing rivers in the valley. Farther on, at last they will join, on their way to the sea.

Back in the hills their course might have been deflected—but now?