faithful, Humphrey, and wear this picture
on your heart, as well as in it."

"Then you must be a very remarkable woman," said Bickley. "Never
before did I hear one of your sex rejoice because a man was faithful to
somebody else."

"Has Bickley been disappointed in his love-heart, that he is so angry
to us women?" asked Yva innocently of me. Then, without waiting for
an answer, she inquired of him whether he had been successful in his
analysis of the Life-water.

"How do you know what I was doing with the Life-water? Did Bastin tell
you?" exclaimed Bickley.

"Bastin told me nothing, except that he was afraid of the descent to
Nyo; that he hated Nyo when he reached it, as indeed I do, and that he
thought that my father, the Lord Oro, was a devil or evil spirit from
some Under-world which he called hell."

"Bastin has an open heart and an open mouth," said Bickley, "for which
I respect him. Follow his example if you will, Lady Yva, and tell us who
and what is the Lord Oro, and who and what are you."

"Have we not done so already? If not, I will repeat. The Lord Oro and
I are two who have lived on from the old time when the world was
different, and yet, I think, the same. He is a man and not a god, and I
am a woman. His powers are great because of his knowledge, which he has
gathered from his forefathers and in a life of a thousand years before
he went to sleep. He can do things you cannot do. Thus, he can pass
through space and take others with him, and return again. He can learn
what is happening in far-off parts of the world, as he did when he
told you of the war in which your country is concerned. He has terrible
powers; for instance, he can kill, as he killed those savages. Also, he
knows the secrets of the earth, and, if it pleases him, can change its
turning so that earthquakes happen and sea becomes land, and land sea,
and the places that were hot grow cold, and those that were cold grow
hot."

"All of which things have happened many times in the history of the
globe," said Bickley, "without the help of the Lord Oro."

"Others had knowledge before my father, and others doubtless will have
knowledge after him. Even I, Yva, have some knowledge, and knowledge is
strength."

"Yes," I interposed, "but such powers as you attribute to your father
are not given to man."

"You mean to man as you know him, man like Bickley, who thinks that he
has learned everything that was ever learned. But it is not so. Hundre