The main meal came on now, and as far as I could see those Martian gallants had extremely good appetites, though they drank at first but little, wisely remembering the strength of their wines.

As for me, I ate of fishes that never swam in earthly seas, and of strange fowl that never flapped a way through thick terrestrial air, ate and drank as happy as a king, and falling each moment more and more in love with the wonderfully beautiful girl at my side who was a real woman of flesh and blood I knew, yet somehow so dainty, so pink and white, so unlike other girls in the smoothness of her outlines, in the subtle grace of each unthinking attitude, that again and again I looked at her over the rim of my tankard half fearing she might dissolve into nothing, being the half-fairy which she was.
Presently she asked, "Did that deed of mine, the hair in the urn, offend you, stranger ?" "Offend me, lady!" I laughed.

"Why, had it been the blackest crime that ever came out of a perverse imagination it would have brought its own pardon with it; I, least of all in this room, have least cause to be offended." "I risked much for you and broke our rules." "Why, no doubt that was so, but 'tis the privilege of your kind to have some say in this little matter of giving and taking in marriage.

I only marvel that your countrywomen submit so tamely to the quaintest game of chance I ever played at.
"Ay, and it is women's nature no doubt to keep the laws which others make, as you have said yourself.

Yet this rule, lady, is one broken with more credit than kept, and if you have offended no one more than me, your penance is easily done." "But I have offended some one," she said, laying her hand on mine with gentle nervousness in its touch, "one who has the power to hurt, and enough energy to resent.