“Well, then,” she said, with a desperate effort, in a voice that trembled between the fear of offending by presumption or exaction, and the desire to give utterance to her wish—­“I want ... will you say that—­if by that time you do not think that I have been too faulty, too undeserving—­that I shall go with you when you quit this world?” And, her eagerness at last overpowering her shyness, she looked up anxiously into my face.

We wholly misconceived each other.  She drooped in bitter disappointment, mistaking my blank surprise for displeasure; her words brought over my mind a rush of that horror with which I ever recall the scenes I witnessed but too often at Indian funerals.

“That, of course, will rest with yourself.  But even should I hereafter deserve and win such love as would prompt the wish, I trust you will never dream of cutting short your life because—­in the ordinary course of nature—­mine should end long before the term of yours.”

Her face again brightened, and she looked up more shyly but not less earnestly.

“I did not make my meaning clear,” she replied.  “I spoke not, as my father sometimes speaks, of leaving this world, when he means to remind us that death is only a departure to another; though that was, not so long ago, the only meaning the words could bear.  I was thinking of your journey, and I want you to take me with you when you go.”

“You have quite settled in your own mind that I shall go!  And in truth you have now removed, as you yesterday created, the only obstacle.  If you would not go with me, I might, rather than give you up, have given up the whole purpose of my enterprise, and have left my friends, and the world from which I came, ignorant whether it had ever been accomplished.  But if you accompany me, I shall certainly try to regain my own planet.”

“Then,” she said hopefully, but half confidently, “when you go, if I have not given you cause of lasting displeasure, you will take me with you?  Most men do not think much of promises, especially of promises made to women; but I have heard you speak as if to break a plighted word were a thing impossible.”

“I promise,” I returned earnestly, very much moved by a proof of real affection such as I had no right to expect, and certainly had not anticipated.  “I give you the word of one who has never lied, that if, when the time comes, you wish to go with me, you shall.  But by that time, you will probably have a better idea what are the dangers you are asking to share.”

“What can that matter?” she answered.  “I suppose in almost any case we should escape or die together?  To leave me here is to inflict certainly, and at once, the worst that can possibly befall me; to take me gives me the hope of living or dying with you; and even if I were killed, I should be with you, and feel that you were kind to me, to the last.”