Windsor Magazine/Volume 45/Tallentyre and the Goddess

TALLENTYRE AND THE GODDESS
By G. B. LANCASTER.
THERE were three of them. Tallentyre, drawn by the laughter, dropped his crutch on the headland and dragged himself through the scented ti-tree scrub by the little tough roots of it until his chin stuck over the edge and he looked down. One lay between white surf and yellow sand; this he knew later for shy Jessica, with the swing of the tide lifting the dark frill of her bathing-frock round her like a halo. One, in a tumble of scarlet, and sunburned limbs—this was Dolly—knotted a yapping terrier up in great glistening lengths of fresh kelp, and laughed until the sandy cliffs and the grey gum-forest behind flung echo back to her. And one—this was the Goddess—stood with white feet in the blue water and hands clasped behind her head.
She looked to the rising sun, where the world was saffron and pink and bird's-egg blue, and her dress was a smoky grey, which made her elusive and all things wonderful, even then. She was Venus rising from the sea, only much more respectable. She was tall and lithe as a sapling, and white as a peeled wand, and her hair was burnished where the strengthening sunlight struck it. Tallentyre understood that he ha

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