I had tried to get into my voice my assurance that, of course, I remembered no other more recent meeting—­though, naturally, as she had given that little start in the doorway, there had flashed on me again the picture of her standing, moonlit, in another resounding doorway, and of the wild start she had given then, as the golden pieces streamed from her lovely surprised mouth, and her lifted hands.  And her eyes—­I could have sworn—­were the living eyes of Jack Harkaway!  Had she a brother, I wondered.  Yet my mind was too dazzled and confused with her nearness to pursue the speculation.

As we sat down to luncheon, waited upon by the little barelegged black children—­waited on, too, surprisingly well, despite the contortions of their primitive embarrassment—­my host once more resumed his character of the classic king welcoming the storm-tossed stranger to his board.

“Far wanderer,” he said, raising his glass to me, “eat of what our board affords, welcome without question of name and nation.  But if, when the food and wine have done their genial office, and the weariness of your journeying has fallen from you, you should feel stirred to tell us somewhat of yourself and your wanderings, what manner of men call you kinsman, in what fair land is your home and the place of your loved ones, be sure that we shall count the tale good hearing, and, for our part, make exchange in like fashion of ourselves and the passage of our days in this lonely isle.”

We all laughed as he ended—­himself with a whinny of laughter.  For, odd as such discourse may sound in the reading, it was uttered so whimsically, and in so spirited and humorous a style that I assure you it was very captivating.

“You should have been an actor, my lord Alcinoues,” I said, laughing.  I seemed already curiously at home, seated there at that table with this fantastic stranger and that being out of fairyland, toward whom I dared only turn my eyes now and again by stealth.  The strange fellow had such a way with him, and his talk made you feel that he had known you all your life.

“Ah!  I have had my dreams.  I have had my dreams!” he answered, his eyes gazing with a momentary wistfulness across the orange trees.

Then we talked at random, as friendly strangers talk over luncheon, though we were glad enough that he should do all the talking—­wonderful, iridescent, madcap talk, such as a man here and there in ten thousand, gifted with perhaps the most attractive of all human gifts, has at his command.

And, every now and again, my eyes, falling on the paradoxical squalor of his clothing, would remind me of the enigma of this courtly vagabond; though—­need I say it?—­my eyes and my heart had other business than with him, throughout that wonderful meal, enfolded as I felt myself once more in that golden cloud of magnetic vitality, which had at first swept over me, as with a breath of perfumed fire, among the salt pork and the tinware of Sweeney’s store.