The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Transient Guest, by Edgar Saltus

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Title: A Transient Guest
and Other Episodes

Author: Edgar Saltus

Release Date: July 9, 2010 [EBook #33123]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A TRANSIENT GUEST,

AND OTHER EPISODES.

BY EDGAR SALTUS

BELFORD, CLARKE & CO.
CHICAGO, NEW YORK, AND SAN FRANCISCO
PUBLISHERS

London, HENRY J. DRANE, Lovell's Court, Paternoster Row

COPYRIGHT, 1889,
BY EDGAR SALTUS.

Press of
E. B. Sheldon & Co.
New Haven, Conn.

TO
K. J. M.

_New York, 1st June, 1889._

CONTENTS.

A TRANSIENT GUEST

THE GRAND DUKE'S RUBIES

A MAID OF MODERN ATHENS

FAUSTA

A TRANSIENT GUEST.

I.

Since the _Koenig Wilhelm_, of the Dutch East India Service, left
Batavia, the sky had been torpidly blue, that suffocating indigo which
seems so neighborly that the traveller fancies were he a trifle taller
he could touch it with the ferule of his stick. When night came, the
stars would issue from their ambush and stab it through and through, but
the glittering cicatrices which they made left it bluer even, more
persistent than before. And now, as the ship entered the harbor, there
was a cruelty about it that exulted and defied. The sun, too, seemed to
menace; on every bit of brass it placed a threat, and in the lap of the
waters there was an understanding and a pact. Beyond, to the right, was
one long level stretch of sand on which the breakers fawned with
recurrent surge and swoon. Behind it were the green ramparts of a
forest; to the left were the bungalows and booths of Siak; while in the
distance, among the hills and intervales, where but a few years before
natives lurked beneath the monstrous lilies and clutched their kriss in
fierce surmise, a locomotive had left