There is nothing we possess that we shall not delight to give as token of regard and in remembrance of this day to the saviour of our child." "If," I said, "I find a neighbour's purse containing half his fortune, and return it to him, he may offer me what reward I ask, but would hardly think it reasonable if I asked for the purse and its contents.
But you have only one thing I care to possess--that which I have, by God's help, been enabled to save to-day.

If I must ask a gift, give me Eveena herself." Utilitarianism has extinguished in Mars the use of compliment and circumlocution; and until I concluded, their looks of mild perplexity showed that neither Zulve nor her husband caught my purpose.

I fancied--for, not daring to look them in the face, I had turned my downcast glance on Eveena--that she had perhaps somewhat sooner divined the object of my thoughts.

However, a silence of surprise--was it of reluctance ?--followed, and then Zulve bent over her daughter and looked into her half-averted face, while Esmo answered-- "What you should ask I promised to give; what you have asked I give, in so far as it is mine to give, in willing fulfilment of my pledge.
But, of course, what I can give is but my free permission to my daughter to answer for herself.

You will be, I hope, within a few days at furthest, one of those in whose possession alone a woman of my house could be safe or content; and, free by the law of the land to follow her own wish, she is freed by her father's voice from the rule which the usage of ten thousand years imposes on the daughters of our brotherhood." Zulve then looked up, for Eveena had hidden her face in her mother's robe, and said-- "If my child will not speak for herself I must speak for her, and in my own name and in hers I fulfil her father's promise.