lence of surprise--was
it of reluctance?--followed, and then Zulve bent over her daughter and
looked into her half-averted face, while Esmo answered--

"What you should ask I promised to give; what you have asked I give,
in so far as it is mine to give, in willing fulfilment of my pledge.
But, of course, what I can give is but my free permission to my
daughter to answer for herself. You will be, I hope, within a few days
at furthest, one of those in whose possession alone a woman of my
house could be safe or content; and, free by the law of the land to
follow her own wish, she is freed by her father's voice from the rule
which the usage of ten thousand years imposes on the daughters of our
brotherhood."

Zulve then looked up, for Eveena had hidden her face in her mother's
robe, and said--

"If my child will not speak for herself I must speak for her, and in
my own name and in hers I fulfil her father's promise. And now let my
husband tell his story, for nothing can solemnise more appropriately
the betrothal of a daughter of the Star, than her admission to the
knowledge of the Order whose privileges are her heritage."

"At the time," Esmo began, "when material science had gained a decided
ascendant, and enforced the recognition of its methods as the only
ones whereby certain knowledge and legitimate belief could be
attained, those who clung most earnestly to convictions not acquired
or favoured by scientific logic were sorely dismayed. They were
confounded, not so much by the yet informal but irrevocable
majority-vote against them, as by an instinctive misgiving that
Science was right; and by irrepressible doubts whether that which
would not bear the application of scientific method could in any sense
be true or trustworthy knowledge. At the same time, to apply a
scientific method to the cherished beliefs threatened only to dissolve
them. Fortunately for them and their successors, there was living at
that time one of the most remarkable and original thinkers whom our
race has produced. From him came the suggestions that gave impulse to
our learning and birth to our Order. 'The reasonings, the processes of
Science,' he affirmed,'are beyond challenge. Their trustworthiness
depends not on their subject-matter, but on their own character; not
on their relation to outward Nature, but on their conformity to the
laws of thought. Their upholders are right in affirming that what will
not ultimately bear the test of their app