Melvar of Astran
Just before noon I staggered into a little dell that was covered with unusually profuse growths of the crimson plants. Along a little trickling stream of water they were waist high, bearing abundantly the star-shaped flowers, and small golden-brown fruits. Suddenly there was a rustling in the thicket and the head and shoulders of a young woman rose abruptly out of the red brush. In her hand she held a woven basket, half full of the fruits. In my alarm I had thrown up the rifle. But soon lowered it and grinned in confusion when I realized that it was a girl, and by far the most beautiful one I had ever seen. I have always been awkward in the presence of a beautiful woman, and for a few minutes I did nothing but stand and stare at her, while her quizzical dark, blue eyes inscrutably returned my look.
She was clad in a slight garment, green in color, that seemed to be woven of a fine-spun metal. Her hair was long and golden, fastened behind her shapely head with a circlet—a thin band cut evidently from a single monster ruby. Her features were fine and delicate, and she had a surpassing grace of figure. That her slender arms were stained to the elbows with the red juice of the plants—she had been picking the golden fruits—did not detract from her beauty. I was struck—and I will admit it, conquered—by her face. For a little time she stood very erect, looking at me with an odd expression, and then she spoke, enunciating the words very carefully, in a rich golden voice.
The language was English!
She said, "Are you—an American?"
"At your service completely," I told her, "Winfield Fowler, of White Deer, Texas, and New York City, not to mention other points. But I own to some surprise at finding a knowledge of the idiom in a denizen of so remote a locality."
"I can understand," she smiled. "But I think you could talk—more simply. So you are Winfield, who came with Austen across the great—ocean from America?"
"You guessed it," I said, trying to keep my growing excitement in hand, while I marveled at her beauty. "Is mind reading common in these parts?"
"Doctor Austen—the American—told me about you, his friend. And he gave me two books. Tennyson's poems, and—'The Pathfinder.'"
"So you have seen Austen?" I cried in real astonishment. "Are you Melvar? Are you the 'maiden of the crystal city?'"