Lin! My answer is plain. Lest in naught, and unwittingly, I
should betray your hospitality; lest, in the caprice of will which in
our world is proverbial among the other sex, and from which even a Gy
is not free, your adorable daughter should deign to regard me, though a
Tish, as if I were a civilised An, and--and--and---" "Court you as
her spouse," put in Aph-Lin, gravely, and without any visible sign of
surprise or displeasure.

"You have said it."

"That would be a misfortune," resumed my host, after a pause, "and I
feel you have acted as you ought in warning me. It is, as you imply,
not uncommon for an unwedded Gy to conceive tastes as to the object she
covets which appear whimsical to others; but there is no power to compel
a young Gy to any course opposed to that which she chooses to pursue.
All we can to is to reason with her, and experience tells us that the
whole College of Sages would find it vain to reason with a Gy in a
matter that concerns her choice in love. I grieve for you, because such
a marriage would be against the A-glauran, or good of the community, for
the children of such a marriage would adulterate the race: they might
even come into the world with the teeth of carnivorous animals; this
could not be allowed: Zee, as a Gy, cannot be controlled; but you, as a
Tish, can be destroyed. I advise you, then, to resist her addresses;
to tell her plainly that you can never return her love. This happens
constantly. Many an An, however, ardently wooed by one Gy, rejects her,
and puts an end to her persecution by wedding another. The same course
is open to you."

"No; for I cannot wed another Gy without equally injuring the community,
and exposing it to the chance of rearing carnivorous children."

"That is true. All I can say, and I say it with the tenderness due to a
Tish, and the respect due to a guest, is frankly this--if you yield, you
will become a cinder. I must leave it to you to take the best way you
can to defend yourself. Perhaps you had better tell Zee that she is
ugly. That assurance on the lips of him she woos generally suffices to
chill the most ardent Gy. Here we are at my country-house."

Chapter XXIII.

I confess that my conversation with Aph-Lin, and the extreme coolness
with which he stated his inability to control the dangerous caprice of
his daughter, and treated the idea of the reduction into a cinder to
which her amorous flame might expose my too seductive person, took away