walk.  He thus plies his invented or artificial wings with as much safety as a bird plies those with which it is born.  I did not think sufficiently of this when I allowed you to try an experiment which allured me, for I have longed to have in you a companion.  I shall abandon the experiment now.  Your life is becoming dear to me.”  Herewith the Gy’s voice and face softened, and I felt more seriously alarmed than I had been in my previous flights.

Now that I am on the subject of wings, I ought not to omit mention of a custom among the Gy-ei which seems to me very pretty and tender in the sentiment it implies.  A Gy wears wings habitually when yet a virgin—­she joins the Ana in their aerial sports—­she adventures alone and afar into the wilder regions of the sunless world:  in the boldness and height of her soarings, not less than in the grace of her movements, she excels the opposite sex.  But, from the day of her marriage she wears wings no more, she suspends them with her own willing hand over the nuptial couch, never to be resumed unless the marriage tie be severed by divorce or death.

Now when Zee’s voice and eyes thus softened—­and at that softening I prophetically recoiled and shuddered—­Taee, who had accompanied us in our flights, but who, child-like, had been much more amused with my awkwardness, than sympathising in my fears or aware of my danger, hovered over us, poised amidst spread wings, and hearing the endearing words of the young Gy, laughed aloud.  Said he, “If the Tish cannot learn the use of wings, you may still be his companion, Zee, for you can suspend your own.”

Chapter XXI.

I had for some time observed in my host’s highly informed and powerfully proportioned daughter that kindly and protective sentiment which, whether above the earth or below it, an all-wise Providence has bestowed upon the feminine division of the human race.  But until very lately I had ascribed it to that affection for ‘pets’ which a human female at every age shares with a human child.  I now became painfully aware that the feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was different from that which I had inspired in Taee.  But this conviction gave me none of that complacent gratification which the vanity of man ordinarily conceives from a flattering appreciation of his personal merits on the part of the fair sex; on the contrary, it inspired me with fear.  Yet of all the Gy-ei in the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and the strongest, she was, by common repute, the gentlest, and she was certainly the most popularly beloved.  The desire to aid, to succour, to protect, to comfort, to bless, seemed to pervade her whole being.  Though the complicated miseries that originate in penury and guilt are unknown to the social system of the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet discovered in vril an agency which could banish sorrow from life; and wherever amongst her people sorrow found its way, there Zee