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"At the same time I do not wish to be the means of making you unhappy, as
surely would be the result were I to marry you without love. Let us wait until I
know myself better. Though you have spoken to me of the matter before, I realize
now that I never have made any effort to determine whether or not I really can
love you. There is time enough before we reach civilization, if ever we are
fortunate enough to do so at all. Will you not be as generous as you are brave,
and give me a few days before I must make you a final answer?"
With Professor Maxon's solemn promise to insure his ultimate success von Horn
was very gentle and gracious in deferring to the girl's wishes. The girl for her part
could not put from her mind the disappointment she had felt when she
discovered that her rescuer was von Horn, and not the handsome young giant
whom she had been positive was in close pursuit of her abductors.
When Number Thirteen had been mentioned she had always pictured him as a
hideous monster, similar to the creature that had seized her in the jungle beside
the encampment that first day she had seen the mysterious stranger, of whom
she could obtain no information either from her father or von Horn. When she
had recently insisted that the same man had been at the head of her father's
creatures in an attempt to rescue her, both von Horn and Professor Maxon
scoffed at the idea, until at last she was convinced that the fright and the firelight
had conspired to conjure in her brain the likeness of one who was linked by
memory to another time of danger and despair.
Virginia could not understand why it was that the face of the stranger persisted
in obtruding itself in her memory. That the man was unusually good looking was
undeniable, but she had known many good looking men, nor was she especially
impressionable to mere superficial beauty. No words had passed between them
on the occasion of their first meeting, so it could have been nothing that he said
which caused the memory of him to cling so tenaciously in her mind.
What was it then? Was it the memory of the moments that she had lain in his
strong arms--was it the shadow of the sweet, warm glow that had suffused her as
his eyes had caught hers upon his face?
The thing was tantalizing--it was annoying. The girl blushed in mortification at
the very thought that she could cling so resolutely to the memory of a total
stranger, and--still greater humiliation--long in the secret depths of her soul to
see him again.
She was angry with herself, but the more she tried to forget the young giant who
had come into her life for so brief an instant, the more she speculated upon his
identity and the strange fate that had brought him to their little, savage island
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