ent with what I know of your habit of mind, and
ought not much to surprise me. But, from your own account of what you
said to the Zampta, you were not merely willing to risk life for life.
When you deemed it impossible to return without her, you spoke as few
among us would seriously speak of a favourite bride."

"I spoke and felt," I replied, "as any man trained in the hereditary
thought of my race and rank would have spoken of any woman committed
to his care. All that I said and did for Eveena, I should have said
and done, I hope, for the least attractive or least amiable maiden in
this planet who had been similarly entrusted to my charge. How could
any but the vilest coward return and say to a father, 'You trusted
your daughter to me, and she has perished by my fault or neglect'?"

"Not so," he answered, "Eveena alone was to blame--and much to blame.
She says herself that you had told her to remain where you left her
till your return; and if she had not disobeyed, neither her life nor
yours would have been imperilled."

"One hardly expects a young lady to comply exactly with such
requests," I said. "At any rate, Terrestrial feelings of honour and
even of manhood would have made it easier to leap the precipice than
to face you and the world if, no matter by whose fault, my charge had
died in such a manner under my eyes and within my reach."

Esmo's eyes brightened and his cheek flushed a little as I spoke, with
more of earnestness or passion than any incident, however exciting, is
wont to provoke among his impassive race.

"Of one thing," he said, "you have assured me--that the proposal I was
about to make rather invites honour than confers it. I have been
obliged, in speaking of the manners and ideas of my countrymen, to let
you perceive not only that I differ from them, but that there are
others who think and act as I do. We have for ages formed a society
bound together by our peculiar tenets. That we individually differ in
conduct, and, therefore, probably in ideas, from our countrymen, they
necessarily know; that we form a body apart with laws and tenets of
our own, is at least suspected. But our organisation, its powers, its
methods, its rules of membership, and its doctrines are, and have
always been, a secret, and no man's connection with it is avowed or
provable. Our chief distinctive and essential doctrines you hold as
strongly as we do--the All-perfect Existence, the immortal human soul.
From these neces