“Ungrateful!  Do you reproach me for the evidences of my love?  Can you think that, even if unstung by the jealousy which attends upon love till it fades away in blissful trust when we know that the heart we have wooed is won, I could be indifferent to the perils to which the audacious overtures of that silly little child might expose you?” “Hold!  Since you introduce the subject of perils, it perhaps does not misbecome me to say that my most imminent perils come from yourself, or at least would come if I believed in your love and accepted your addresses.  Your father has told me plainly that in that case I should be consumed into a cinder with as little compunction as if I were the reptile whom Taee blasted into ashes with the flash of his wand.”

“Do not let that fear chill your heart to me,” exclaimed Zee, dropping on her knees and absorbing my right hand in the space of her ample palm.  “It is true, indeed, that we two cannot wed as those of the same race wed; true that the love between us must be pure as that which, in our belief, exists between lovers who reunite in the new life beyond that boundary at which the old life ends.  But is it not happiness enough to be together, wedded in mind and in heart?  Listen:  I have just left my father.  He consents to our union on those terms.  I have sufficient influence with the College of Sages to insure their request to the Tur not to interfere with the free choice of a Gy; provided that her wedding with one of another race be but the wedding of souls.  Oh, think you that true love needs ignoble union?  It is not that I yearn only to be by your side in this life, to be part and parcel of your joys and sorrows here:  I ask here for a tie which will bind us for ever and for ever in the world of immortals.  Do you reject me?”

As she spoke, she knelt, and the whole character of her face was changed; nothing of sternness left to its grandeur; a divine light, as that of an immortal, shining out from its human beauty.  But she rather awed me as an angel than moved me as a woman, and after an embarrassed pause, I faltered forth evasive expressions of gratitude, and sought, as delicately as I could, to point out how humiliating would be my position amongst her race in the light of a husband who might never be permitted the name of father.

“But,” said Zee, “this community does not constitute the whole world.  No; nor do all the populations comprised in the league of the Vril-ya.  For thy sake I will renounce my country and my people.  We will fly together to some region where thou shalt be safe.  I am strong enough to bear thee on my wings across the deserts that intervene.  I am skilled enough to cleave open, amidst the rocks, valleys in which to build our home.  Solitude and a hut with thee would be to me society and the universe.  Or wouldst thou return to thine own world, above the surface of this, exposed to the uncertain seasons, and lit but by the changeful orbs which constitute by thy description the fickle character of those savage regions?  I so, speak the word, and I will force the way for thy return, so that I am thy companion there, though, there as here, but partner of thy soul, and fellow traveller with thee to the world in which there is no parting and no death.”