Excerpt from A South Sea Lover: A Romance The sun had sunk into the limitless expanse of the South Pacific, and almost before the last glories of his going had vanished, the ripe stars shone out across the silence of the trackless sea. On the soft sand of the shore, in the greater darkness of the palms that fringed it, with eyes that saw nothing but their inner vision, a girl was standing gazing to the south. The water of the calm lagoon flowed in little ripples round her naked feet, gleaming, glancing, flashing starlight where the broken water caught the kiss of heaven. On the reef outside, the never-sleeping surf beat with its unresting song; and the cloud of Spray that rose and fell, and rose to fall again, from the coral rocks of the barrier, shone palely like a mystic veil against the low golden warmth of the horizon. The soft breathing of the tropic night, which rustled the slender palm leaves overhead, was heavy with the odour of the pale, new-opened flowers that, shy of the daylight, unclosed their heavy petals to the night and wafted their love to the stars. The long, level shore was deserted but for her, and everything was very still. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.