Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/254

242 herself as if she were queen of the earth; which she was. Yet with a dainty grace which for bewitching charm was beyond anything I had ever imagined. And her eyes! They were like twin moons in a summer sky. As I looked at her every nerve in my body tingled.

She added, since she saw me speechless:

“I am the daughter of the gods.”

That was better. She was that. The daughter of the gods—as she put it herself. I could have dropped at her feet and worshipped. But she went on:

“You are from the ship? You are the captain?”

“I am Max Lander.”

“Max Lander?” She repeated my name in a sort of a kind of a way which made everything seem to swim before my eyes. “It is a good name. We shall be friends.”

“Friends!”

She held out her hands to me. As I took them into mine, Lord! how I shivered. I fancy she felt me shaking by the way she smiled. It made me worse, her smile did. She kept cool through it all.

“Shall we not be friends?”

“My dear lady, I—I hope we shall.”

Talk about being at a loss for words! I could have poured out thousands. Only just then my dictionary had all its pages torn out, and I didn’t know where to lay my hand upon one of them.

“It is my father you have come to see.”

“Your father?”

I had forgotten what had brought me. Everything but the fact that she was standing there, in the moonlight, within reach of me, had passed from my mind. Her words brought me back to earth with a bang. Her father? Was it possible that I had come to see her father? She, the daughter of the gods; what