ng her face.

"Don't you know?" I said swiftly. "Haven't you understood long ago that
I love you?" She shook her head.

"Love is something that we don't know here--not until we have been
married and lived with our men. Sometimes not then." But she looked at
me, and I thought there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the impulse I
had been resisting ever since the morning on the mountain became
insupportable, and I caught her in my arms almost roughly. Her face was
close to mine, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her, forgetting
everything but the knowledge that I had stumbled upon the sort of love
that doesn't pass away, no matter how long a man lives.

After a while, though, she drew away as if she resisted not my desire,
but her own.

"No--" she said in a low voice, "no...."

"But Selda!" I stammered, "I love you--I want to marry you." She shook
her head.

"No," she said again, "didn't you understand? I am scheduled to marry
Edvar."

At first I didn't know what she meant.

"Scheduled?" I repeated dully. "I don't understand."

"It has been arranged for years. Don't you remember what Edvar told you
about our marriages here, the very first day you came? I was destined to
marry Edvar long before any of us were born, before our parents, even,
were born. It's the way they order our lives."

"But I love you," I cried in amazement. "And you love me, too. I know
you love me."

"That means nothing here," she said. "It happens sometimes. One has to
accept it. Nothing can be done. We live according to the machinery of
the world. Everything is known and predetermined."

* * * * *

Suddenly, in the midst of what she was saying, close behind me there
sounded even above the roaring of the waterfall a raucous noise like the
hooting of a taxi horn. It was followed by a shrieking of brakes, and a
hoarse voice near by shouted something angry and profane. A rush of air
swept by me, and I heard faintly the sound of a motor moving away, with
a grinding of gears. I looked at Selda.

"Did you hear that?"

She nodded, with wide, frightened eyes. "Yes. It's not the first time."
Suddenly she rose, frowning, as if with pain. "Come," she added, "now we
must go back."

There was nothing else to do. We went back silently to the airship, and
turned its nose toward the city.

But when I left her at her apartment, promising to see her later, I had
one last hope in my mind. I went to the Bureau.

The