gerness at last overpowering her shyness, she looked up
anxiously into my face.

We wholly misconceived each other. She drooped in bitter
disappointment, mistaking my blank surprise for displeasure; her words
brought over my mind a rush of that horror with which I ever recall
the scenes I witnessed but too often at Indian funerals.

"That, of course, will rest with yourself. But even should I hereafter
deserve and win such love as would prompt the wish, I trust you will
never dream of cutting short your life because--in the ordinary course
of nature--mine should end long before the term of yours."

Her face again brightened, and she looked up more shyly but not less
earnestly.

"I did not make my meaning clear," she replied. "I spoke not, as my
father sometimes speaks, of leaving this world, when he means to
remind us that death is only a departure to another; though that was,
not so long ago, the only meaning the words could bear. I was thinking
of your journey, and I want you to take me with you when you go."

"You have quite settled in your own mind that I shall go! And in truth
you have now removed, as you yesterday created, the only obstacle. If
you would not go with me, I might, rather than give you up, have given
up the whole purpose of my enterprise, and have left my friends, and
the world from which I came, ignorant whether it had ever been
accomplished. But if you accompany me, I shall certainly try to regain
my own planet."

"Then," she said hopefully, but half confidently, "when you go, if I
have not given you cause of lasting displeasure, you _will_ take me
with you? Most men do not think much of promises, especially of
promises made to women; but I have heard you speak as if to break a
plighted word were a thing impossible."

"I promise," I returned earnestly, very much moved by a proof of real
affection such as I had no right to expect, and certainly had not
anticipated. "I give you the word of one who has never lied, that if,
when the time comes, you wish to go with me, you shall. But by that
time, you will probably have a better idea what are the dangers you
are asking to share."

"What can that matter?" she answered. "I suppose in almost any case we
should escape or die together? To leave me here is to inflict
certainly, and at once, the worst that can possibly befall me; to take
me gives me the hope of living or dying with you; and even if I were
killed, I should be with you, and feel that y