entertainments are held, and when relations scattered throughout all the realms of the Vril-ya joyfully reunite for a time.  This hospitality, on a scale so extensive, is not to my taste, and therefore I should have been happier had I been less rich.  But we must all bear the lot assigned to us in this short passage through time that we call life.  After all, what are a hundred years, more or less, to the ages through which we must pass hereafter?  Luckily, I have one son who likes great wealth.  It is a rare exception to the general rule, and I own I cannot myself understand it.”

After this conversation I sought to return to the subject which continued to weigh on my heart—­viz., the chances of escape from Zee.  But my host politely declined to renew that topic, and summoned our air-boat.  On our way back we were met by Zee, who, having found us gone, on her return from the College of Sages, had unfurled her wings and flown in search of us.

Her grand, but to me unalluring, countenance brightened as she beheld me, and, poising herself beside the boat on her large outspread plumes, she said reproachfully to Aph-Lin—­“Oh, father, was it right in you to hazard the life of your guest in a vehicle to which he is so unaccustomed?  He might, by an incautious movement, fall over the side; and alas; he is not like us, he has no wings.  It were death to him to fall.  Dear one!” (she added, accosting my shrinking self in a softer voice), “have you no thought of me, that you should thus hazard a life which has become almost a part of mine?  Never again be thus rash, unless I am thy companion.  What terror thou hast stricken into me!”

I glanced furtively at Aph-Lin, expecting, at least, that he would indignantly reprove his daughter for expressions of anxiety and affection, which, under all the circumstances, would, in the world above ground, be considered immodest in the lips of a young female, addressed to a male not affianced to her, even if of the same rank as herself.

But so confirmed are the rights of females in that region, and so absolutely foremost among those rights do females claim the privilege of courtship, that Aph-Lin would no more have thought of reproving his virgin daughter than he would have thought of disobeying the orders of the Tur.  In that country, custom, as he implied, is all in all.

He answered mildly, “Zee, the Tish is in no danger and it is my belief the he can take very good care of himself.”

“I would rather that he let me charge myself with his care.  Oh, heart of my heart, it was in the thought of thy danger that I first felt how much I loved thee!”

Never did man feel in such a false position as I did.  These words were spoken loud in the hearing of Zee’s father—­in the hearing of the child who steered.  I blushed with shame for them, and for her, and could not help replying angrily:  “Zee, either you mock me, which, as your father’s guest, misbecomes you, or the words you utter are improper for a maiden Gy to address even to an An of her own race, if he has not wooed her with the consent of her parents.  How much more improper to address them to a Tish, who has never presumed to solicit your affections, and who can never regard you with other sentiments than those of reverence and awe!”