“These maidens were chosen as the loveliest in all the Nurseries of two continents; every one of them far more beautiful than I can be, even in your eyes.  Pray do not, for my sake, be unkind to them or try to dislike them.  What is it you would escape?”

“Being false to you,” I answered, “if nothing else.”

“False!” she echoed, in unaffected wonder.  “What did you promise me?”

Again I was silenced by the loyal simplicity with which she followed out ideas so strange to me that their consequences, however logical, I could never anticipate; and could hardly admit to be sound, even when so directly and distinctly deduced as now from the intolerable consistency of the premises.

“But,” I answered at last, “how much did you promise, Eveena? and how much more have you given?”

“Nothing,” she replied, “that I did not owe.  You won your right to all the love I could give before you asked for it, and since.”

“We ‘drive along opposite lines,’ Madonna; but we would both give and risk much to avoid what is before us.  Let me ask your father whether it be not yet possible to return to my vessel, and leave a world so uncongenial to both of us.”

“You cannot!” she answered.  “Try to escape—­you insult the Prince; you put yourself and me, for whom you fear more, in the power of a malignant enemy.  You cannot guide a balloon or a vessel, if you could get possession of one; and within a few hours after your departure was known, every road and every port would be closed to you.”

“Can I not send to your father?” I said.

“Probably,” she replied.  “I think we shall find a telegraph in your office, if you will allow me to enter there, now there is no one to see; and it must be morning in Ecasfe.”

Familiar with the construction and arrangement of a Martial house, Eveena immediately crossed the gallery to what she called the office—­the front room on the right, where the head of the house carries on his work or study.  Here, above a desk attached to the wall, was one of those instruments whose manipulation was simple enough for a novice like myself.

“But,” I said, “I cannot write your stylic characters; and if I used the phonic letters, a message from me would be very likely to excite the curiosity of officials who would care about no other.”

“May I,” she suggested, “write your message for you, and put your purport in words that will be understood by my father alone?”

“Do,” I rejoined, “but do it in my name, and I will sign it.”

Under her direction, I took the stylus or pencil and the slip of tafroo she offered me, and wrote my name at the head.  After eliciting the exact purport of the message I desired to send, and meditating for some moments, she wrote and read out to me words literally translated as follows:—­

“The rich aviary my flower-bird thought over full.  I would breathe home [air].  Health-speak.”  The sense of which, as I could already understand, was—­