I dreamed in my sleep.  I dreamed that a very beautiful woman who wore upon her naked breast the emblem of the moon fashioned in crystal, stood over me, looking down upon me with large dark eyes.  And as she looked she sighed.  Thrice she sighed, each time more deeply than the last.  Then she knelt down by me—­or so it seemed in my dream, and laid a tress of her long dark hair against my yellow locks, as though she would match them together.  She did more, indeed—­in my dream—­for lifting that tress of fragrant hair, she let it fall like thistledown across my face and mouth, and then kissed the hair, for I felt her breath reach me through its strands.

The dream ended thus, though I wished very much that it would go on, and I felt as though it had gone away as such visions do.  Awhile later, as I suppose, I awoke quite suddenly, and opened my eyes.  There, near to me, glittering in the full light of the brilliant moon, stood the woman of my dream, only now her naked breast was covered with a splendid cloak broidered with silver, and on her dark locks was a feathered headdress in front of which rose the crescent of the moon, likewise fashioned in silver.  Also in her hand she held a little silver spear.

I stared at her, for move I could not.  Then remembering my crazy talk with Kari, uttered one word, only one.  It was—­Quilla.

She bowed her head and answered in a voice soft as the murmur of the wind through rushes, speaking in the rich language called Quichua that Kari had taught me.  In this tongue, as I have told, we talked together for practice during our journeys and on the island.  So that now I knew it well.

“So indeed am I named after my mother, the ‘Moon,’” she said.  “But how did you know it, O Wanderer, whose skin is white as the foam of the sea and whose hair is yellow as the fine gold in the temples?”

“I think you must have told me when you knelt over me just now,” I said.

I saw the red blood run to her brow, but she only shook her head, and answered: 

“Nay, my mother, the Moon, must have told you; or perchance you learned it in the spirit.  At least, Quilla am I named and you called me aright.”

Now I stood up and stared at her, overcome by the strangeness of the business, and she stared at me.  A marvellously beautiful woman she was in her dazzling robe and headdress, and lighter coloured than any native I had seen, almost white, indeed, in the moonlight save for the copper tinge that marked her race; tall, too, yet not over-tall; slim and straight as an arrow, but high-breasted and round-limbed, and with a wild grace in her movements like to that of a hawk upon the wing.  Also to my fancy in her face there was something more than common youthful beauty, something spiritual, such as great artists show upon the carven countenances of saints.

Indeed she might well have been one whose human blood was mixed with some other alien strain—­as she had called herself, a daughter of the Moon.