"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.
A question rose to my lips and burst from them; it was:
"Tell me, O Quilla, are you wife or maid?"
"Maid am I," she answered, "yet one who is promised as a wife," and she sighed, then went on quickly as though this matter were something of which she did not wish to talk, "And tell me, O Wanderer, are you god or man?"
"I am a Son of the Sea as you are a Daughter of the Moon."
She turned her head and glanced at the radiance which lay upon the face of the deep, then said as though to herself:
"The moon shines upon the sea and the sea mirrors back the moon, yet they are far apart and never may draw near."
"Not so, O Quilla. Out of the sea does the moon rise and, her course run, into the sea's white arms she sinks to sleep at last."
Again the red blood ran to her brow and her great eyes fell, those eyes of which never before had I seen the like.
"It seems that they speak our tongue in the sea, and prettily," she murmured, adding, "But is it not from and into Heaven that the Moon rises and departs?"