oon as I could hope to do so without annoying or alarming
Eveena.

"Are you afraid of me?" I asked somewhat abruptly. The question may
have startled her, but I was more startled by the answer.

"Of course," she said in a tone which would have been absolutely
matter of fact, except that the doubt evidently surprised her. "Ought
I not to be so? But what made you ask? And what had I done to
displease you, just before they sent us the 'courage cup'?"

"I did not mean to show anything like displeasure," I replied. "But I
was thinking then, and I may tell you now, that you remind me not of
the women of my own Earth, but of petted children suddenly transferred
to a harsh school. You speak and look like such a child, as if you
expected each moment at least to be severely scolded, if not beaten,
without knowing your fault."

"Not yet," she murmured, with a smile which seemed to me more painful
than tears would have been. "But please don't speak as if I should
fear anything so much as being scolded by you. We have a saying that
'the hand may bruise the skin, the tongue can break the heart.'"

"True enough," I said; "only on Earth it is mostly woman's tongue that
breaks the heart, and men must not in return bruise the skin."

"Why not?" she asked. "You said to my mother the other day that Arga
(the fretful child of Esmo's adoption) deserved to be beaten."

"Women are supposed," I answered, "to be amenable to milder
influences; and a man must be drunk or utterly brutal before he could
deal harshly with a creature so gentle and so fragile as yourself."

"Don't spoil me," she said, with a pretty half-mournful, half-playful
glance. "'A petted bride makes an unhappy wife.' Surely it is no true
kindness to tempt us to count on an indulgence that cannot last."

"There is among us," I rejoined, "a saying about 'breaking a butterfly
on the wheel'--as if one spoke of driving away the tiny birds that
nestle and feed in your flowers with a hammer. To apply your proverbs
to yourself would be to realise this proverb of ours. Can you not let
me pet and spoil my little flower-bird at least till I have tamed her,
and trust me to chastise her as soon as she shall give reason--if I
can find a tendril or flower-stem light enough for the purpose?"

"Will you promise to use a hammer when you wish to be rid of her?"
said she, glancing up for one moment through her drooping lashes with
a look exactly attuned to the mingled archness and pathos o