d 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.

CHAPTER VI

_Doubloons._

Luncheon over, the Lady Calypso, with a stately inclination of her
lovely head, left us to our wine and our cigars. For, as I realised, we
were very much in England, in spite of all the orange trees and the
palms, the England of two or three generations ago, and but seldom
nowadays to be found in England itself.

The time had come, after the Homeric formula which my host had
whimsically applied to the situation, for the far-travelled guest to
declare himself, and I saw in my host's eye a courteous invitation to
begin. While his fantastic tongue had gone a-wagging from China to Peru,
I had been pondering what account to give of myself, and I had decided,
for various reasons--of which the Lady Calypso was, of course, first,
but the open-hearted charm of her father a close second--to tell him the
whole of my story. Whatever his and her particular secret was, it was
evident to me that it was an innocent and honourable one; and, besides,
I may have had a notion that before long I was to have a family interest
in it. So I began--starting in with a little prelude in the manner of
my host, just to enter into the spirit of the game:

"My Lord Alcinoues; your guest, the far wanderer, having partaken of your
golden hospitality, is now fain to open his heart to you, and tell you
of himself and his race, his home and his loved ones across the
wine-dark sea, and such of his adventures as may give pleasure to your
ears" ... though, having no talents in that direction, I was glad enough
to abandon my lame attempt at his Homeric style for a plain
straightforwar