ike them. What is it you would escape?"

"Being false to you," I answered, "if nothing else."

"False!" she echoed, in unaffected wonder. "What did you promise me?"

Again I was silenced by the loyal simplicity with which she followed
out ideas so strange to me that their consequences, however logical, I
could never anticipate; and could hardly admit to be sound, even when
so directly and distinctly deduced as now from the intolerable
consistency of the premises.

"But," I answered at last, "how much did _you_ promise, Eveena? and
how much more have you given?"

"Nothing," she replied, "that I did not owe. You won your right to all
the love I could give before you asked for it, and since."

"We 'drive along opposite lines,' Madonna; but we would both give and
risk much to avoid what is before us. Let me ask your father whether
it be not yet possible to return to my vessel, and leave a world so
uncongenial to both of us."

"You cannot!" she answered. "Try to escape--you insult the Prince; you
put yourself and me, for whom you fear more, in the power of a
malignant enemy. You cannot guide a balloon or a vessel, if you could
get possession of one; and within a few hours after your departure was
known, every road and every port would be closed to you."

"Can I not send to your father?" I said.

"Probably," she replied. "I think we shall find a telegraph in your
office, if you will allow me to enter there, now there is no one to
see; and it must be morning in Ecasfe."

Familiar with the construction and arrangement of a Martial house,
Eveena immediately crossed the gallery to what she called the
office--the front room on the right, where the head of the house
carries on his work or study. Here, above a desk attached to the wall,
was one of those instruments whose manipulation was simple enough for
a novice like myself.

"But," I said, "I cannot write your stylic characters; and if I used
the phonic letters, a message from me would be very likely to excite
the curiosity of officials who would care about no other."

"May I," she suggested, "write your message for you, and put your
purport in words that will be understood by my father alone?"

"Do," I rejoined, "but do it in my name, and I will sign it."

Under her direction, I took the stylus or pencil and the slip of
_tafroo_ she offered me, and wrote my name at the head. After
eliciting the exact purport of the message I desired to send, and
meditating for s