We breakfasted earlier than usual.  My gentle bride had been subdued into a silence, not sullen, but so sad that when her wistful eyes followed my every movement as I prepared to start, I could willingly, to bring back their brightness, have renounced the promise of the day.  But this must not be; and turning to take leave on the threshold, I said—­

“Be sure I shall come to no harm; and if I did, the worst pang of death would be the memory of the first sharp words I have spoken to you, and which, I confess, were an ill return for the inconvenient expression of your affectionate anxiety.”

“Do not speak so,” she half whispered.  “I deserved any mark of your displeasure; I only wish I could persuade you that the sharpest sting lies in the lips we love.  Do remember, since you would not let me run the slightest risk of harm, that if you come to hurt you will have killed me.”

“Rest assured I shall come to no serious ill.  I hope this evening to laugh with you at your alarms; and so long as you do not see me either in the flesh or in the spirit, you may know that I am safe.  I could not leave you for ever without meeting you again.”

This speech, which I should have ventured in no other presence, would hardly have established my lunacy more decisively in Martial eyes than in those of Terrestrial common sense.  It conveyed, however, a real if not sufficient consolation to Eveena; the idea it implied being not wholly unfamiliar to a daughter of the Star.  I was surprised that, almost shrinking from my last embrace, Eveena suddenly dropped her veil around her; till, turning, I saw that Ergimo was standing at the top of the ladder leading to the deck, and just in sight.

“I will send word,” he said, addressing himself to me, but speaking for her ears, “of your safety at noon and at night.  So far as my utmost efforts can ensure it you will be safe; an obligation higher, and enforced by sanctions graver, than even the Campta’s command forbids me to lead a brother into peril, and fail to bring him out of it.”

The significant word was spoken in so low a tone that it could not possibly reach the ears of our companions of the chase, who had mustered on shore within a few feet of the vessel.  But Eveena evidently caught both the sound and the meaning, and I was glad that they should convey to her a confidence which seemed to myself no better founded than her alarms.  To me its only value lay in the friendly relation it established with one I had begun greatly to like.  I relied on my own strength and nerve for all that human exertion could do in such peril as we might encounter; and, in a case in which these might fail me, I doubted whether even the one tie that has binding force on Mars would avail me much.