t 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 steere