To Velna I could not speak.  Sure that Eveena had told her all she could wish to know or all it was safe to tell, a long embrace spoke my farewell to her who had shared with me the first part of the long watch of the death-chamber.  Enva and her companions had gathered, not from words, that this journey was more than an ordinary absence.  Some instinct or presentiment suggested to them that it might, possibly at least, be a final parting; and I was touched as much as surprised by the tears and broken words with which they assured me that, greatly as they had vexed my home life, conscious as they were that they had contributed to it no element but bitterness and trouble, they felt that they had been treated with unfailing justice and almost unfailing kindness.  Then, turning to Eveena, Enva spoke for the rest—­

“We should have treated you less ill if we could at all have understood you.  We understand you just as little now.  Clasfempta is man after all, bridling his own temper as a strong man rules a large household of women or a herd of ambau.  But you are not woman like other women; and yet, in so far as women are or think they are softer or gentler than men, so far, twelvefold twelve times told, are you softer, tenderer, gentler than woman.”

Eveena struggled hard so far to suppress her sobs as to give an answer.  But, abandoning the effort, she only kissed warmly the lips, and clasped long and tenderly the hands, that had never spoken a kind word or done a kind act for her.  At the very last moment she faltered out a few words which were not for them.

“Tell Eive,” she said, “I wish her well; and wishing her well, I cannot wish her happy—­yet.”

We embarked in the balloon, attended as on our last journey by two of the brethren in my employment, both, I noticed, armed with the lightning gun.  I myself trusted as usual to the sword, strong, straight, heavy, with two edges sharp as razors, that had enabled my hand so often to guard my head; and the air-gun that reminded me of so many days of sport, the more enjoyed for the peril that attended it.  Screened from observation, both reclining in our own compartment of the car, Eveena and I spent the long undisturbed hours of the first three days and nights of our journey in silent interchange of thought and feeling that seldom needed or was interrupted by words.  Her family affections were very strong.  Her brother had deserved and won her love; but conscious so long of a peril surrounding myself, fearfully impressed by the incident which showed how close that peril had come, her thought and feeling were absorbed in me.  So, could they have known the present and foreseen the future, even those who loved her best and most prized her love for them would have wished it to be.  As we crossed, at the height of a thousand feet, the river dividing that continent between east and west which marks the frontier of Elcavoo, a slight marked movement of agitation, a few eager whispers of consultation, in the other compartment called my attention.  As I parted the screen, the elder of the attendant brethren addressed me—­