Ergimo, however, was more of Eveena’s mind than of mine.  “I have complied,” he said, “with your wishes, as the Campta ordered me to do.  But I am equally bound, by his orders and by my duty, to tell you that in my opinion you are running risks altogether out of proportion to any object our adventure can serve.  Scarcely any of the creatures we shall hunt are other than very formidable.  Eyen the therne, with the spikes on its fore-limbs, can inflict painful if not dangerous wounds, and its bite is said to be not unfrequently venomous.  You are not used to our methods of hunting, to the management of the caldecta, or to the use of our weapons.  I can conceive no reason why you should incur what is at any rate a considerable chance, not merely of death, but of defeating the whole purpose of your extraordinary journey, simply to do or to see the work on which we peril only the least valuable lives among us.”

I was about to answer him even more decidedly than I had replied to Eveena, when a pressure on my arm drew my eyes in the other direction; and, to my extreme mortification, I perceived that Eveena herself, in all-absorbing eagerness to learn the opinion of an intelligent and experienced hunter, had stolen on deck and had heard all that had passed.  I was too much vexed to make any other reply to Ergimo’s argument than the single word, “I shall go.”  Really angry with her for the first and last time, but not choosing to express my displeasure in the presence of a third person, I hurried Eveena down the ladder into our cabin.

“Tell me,” I said, “what, according to your own rules of feminine reserve and obedience, you deserve?  What would one of your people say to a wife who followed him without leave into the company of a stranger, to listen to that which she knew she was not meant to hear?”

She answered by throwing off her veil and head-dress, and standing up silent before me.

“Answer me, child,” I repeated, more than half appeased by the mute appeal of her half-raised eyes and submissive attitude.  “I know you will not tell me that you have not broken all the restraints of your own laws and customs.  What would your father, for instance, say to such an escapade?”

She was silent, till the touch of my hand, contradicting perhaps the harshness of my words, encouraged her to lift her eyes, full of tears, to mine.

“Nothing,” was her very unexpected reply.

“Nothing?” I rejoined.  “If you can tell me that you have not done wrong, I shall be sorry to have reproved you so sharply.”

“I shall tell you no such lie!” she answered almost indignantly.  “You asked what would be said.”

I was fairly at a loss.  The figure which Martial grammarians call “the suppressed alternative” is a great favourite, and derives peculiar force from the varied emphasis their syntax allows.  But, resolved not to understand a meaning much more distinctly conveyed in her words than in my translation, I replied, “I shall say nothing then, except—­don’t do it again;” and I extricated myself promptly if ignominiously from the dilemma, by leaving the cabin and closing the door, so sharply and decidedly as to convey a distinct intimation that it was not again to be opened.