Chapter XXI.
I had for some time observed in my host's highly informed and powerfullyproportioned daughter that kindly and protective sentiment which,whether above the earth or below it, an all-wise Providence has bestowedupon the feminine division of the human race. But until very lately Ihad ascribed it to that affection for 'pets' which a human female atevery age shares with a human child. I now became painfully aware thatthe feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was different from thatwhich I had inspired in Taee. But this conviction gave me none of thatcomplacent gratification which the vanity of man ordinarily conceivesfrom a flattering appreciation of his personal merits on the part ofthe fair sex; on the contrary, it inspired me with fear. Yet of allthe Gy-ei in the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and thestrongest, she was, by common repute, the gentlest, and she wascertainly the most popularly beloved. The desire to aid, to succour, toprotect, to comfort, to bless, seemed to pervade her whole being. Thoughthe complicated miseries that originate in penury and guilt are unknownto the social system of the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet discoveredin vril an agency which could banish sorrow from life; and whereveramongst her people sorrow found its way, there Zee followed in themission of comforter. Did some sister Gy fail to secure the love shesighed for? Zee sought her out, and brought all the resources of herlore, and all the consolations of her sympathy, to bear upon a griefthat so needs the solace of a confidant. In the rare cases, when graveillness seized upon childhood or youth, and the cases, less rare,when, in the hardy and adventurous probation of infants, some accident,attended with pain and injury occurred, Zee forsook her studies andher sports, and became the healer and nurse. Her favourite flightswere towards the extreme boundaries of the domain where children werestationed on guard against outbreaks of warring forces in nature, or theinvasions of devouring animals, so that she might warn them of any perilwhich her knowledge detected or foresaw, or be at hand if any harm hadbefallen. Nay, even in the exercise of her scientific acquirements therewas a concurrent benevolence of purpose and will. Did she learn anynovelty in invention that would be useful to the practitioner of somespecial art or craft? she hastened to communicate and explain it. Wassome veteran sage of the College perplexed and wearied with the toil ofan abstruse study? she would patiently devote herself to his aid, workout details for him, sustain his spirits with her hopeful smile, quickenhis wit with her luminous suggestion, be to him, as it were, his owngood genius made visible as the strengthener and inspirer. The sametenderness she exhibited to the inferior creatures. I have often knownher bring home some sick and wounded animal, and tend and cherish it asa mother would tend and cherish her stricken child. Many a time when Isat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I havewatched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few momentsgroups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward withjoyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so thatshe seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked withher amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer wouldscent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caressof her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musicalwhisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashionamong the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet,with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars.These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wandthey take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. Thisserves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in theirwanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse thedark. There are times, when I have seen Zee's thoughtful majesty of facelighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her tobe a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the visionof a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feelfor this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love.Is it that, among the race I belong to, man's pride so far influenceshis passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if hefeels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by whatstrange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in thesupremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked allother races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour mewith her preference? In personal qualifications, though I passed forgood-looking amongst the people I came from, the handsomest of mycountrymen might have seemed insignificant and homely beside the grandand serene type of beauty which characterised the aspect of the Vril-ya.
That novelty, the very difference between myself and those to whom Zeewas accustomed, might serve to bias her fancy was probable enough, andas the reader will see later, such a cause might suffice to account forthe predilection with which I was distinguished by a young Gy scarcelyout of her childhood, and very inferior in all respects to Zee. Butwhoever will consider those tender characteristics which I have justascribed to the daughter of Aph-Lin, may readily conceive that the maincause of my attraction to her was in her instinctive desire to cherish,to comfort, to protect, and, in protecting, to sustain and to exalt.Thus, when I look back, I account for the only weakness unworthy ofher lofty nature, which bowed the daughter of the Vril-ya to a woman'saffection for one so inferior to herself as was her father's guest. Butbe the cause what it may, the consciousness that I had inspired suchaffection thrilled me with awe--a moral awe of her very imperfections,of her mysterious powers, of the inseparable distinctions between herrace and my own; and with that awe, I must confess to my shame, therecombined the more material and ignoble dread of the perils to which herpreference would expose me.
Under these anxious circumstances, fortunately, my conscience and senseof honour were free from reproach. It became clearly my duty, if Zee'spreference continued manifest, to intimate it to my host, with, ofcourse, all the delicacy which is ever to be preserved by a well-bredman in confiding to another any degree of favour by which one of thefair sex may condescend to distinguish him. Thus, at all events,I should be freed from responsibility or suspicion of voluntaryparticipation in the sentiments of Zee; and the superior wisdom ofmy host might probably suggest some sage extrication from my perilousdilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the ordinary instinct of civilised andmoral man, who, erring though he be, still generally prefers the rightcourse in those cases where it is obviously against his inclinations,his interests, and his safety to elect the wrong one.