d your
friend. When bitter trouble befals you in life, or when, alone, you
find yourself face to face with death, you may think of what has
passed to-day. Then remember, for your comfort, my last words--I
forgive you, and I wish you happy."

To Velna I could not speak. Sure that Eveena had told her all she
could wish to know or all it was safe to tell, a long embrace spoke my
farewell to her who had shared with me the first part of the long
watch of the death-chamber. Enva and her companions had gathered, not
from words, that this journey was more than an ordinary absence. Some
instinct or presentiment suggested to them that it might, possibly at
least, be a final parting; and I was touched as much as surprised by
the tears and broken words with which they assured me that, greatly as
they had vexed my home life, conscious as they were that they had
contributed to it no element but bitterness and trouble, they felt
that they had been treated with unfailing justice and almost unfailing
kindness. Then, turning to Eveena, Enva spoke for the rest--

"We should have treated you less ill if we could at all have
understood you. We understand you just as little now. Clasfempta is
man after all, bridling his own temper as a strong man rules a large
household of women or a herd of _ambau_. But you are not woman like
other women; and yet, in so far as women are or think they are softer
or gentler than men, so far, twelvefold twelve times told, are you
softer, tenderer, gentler than woman."

Eveena struggled hard so far to suppress her sobs as to give an
answer. But, abandoning the effort, she only kissed warmly the lips,
and clasped long and tenderly the hands, that had never spoken a kind
word or done a kind act for her. At the very last moment she faltered
out a few words which were not for them.

"Tell Eive," she said, "I wish her well; and wishing her well, I
cannot wish her happy--_yet_."

We embarked in the balloon, attended as on our last journey by two of
the brethren in my employment, both, I noticed, armed with the
lightning gun. I myself trusted as usual to the sword, strong,
straight, heavy, with two edges sharp as razors, that had enabled my
hand so often to guard my head; and the air-gun that reminded me of so
many days of sport, the more enjoyed for the peril that attended it.
Screened from observation, both reclining in our own compartment of
the car, Eveena and I spent the long undisturbed hours of the first