Chapter 30: Word Music

The boat had a mast stepped near the bow, and a triangular cloth sail. The Very Young Man sat in the stern, steering with a short, broad-bladed paddle; Aura lay on a pile of rushes in the bottom of the boat, looking up at him.

For about half a mile the Very Young Man sailed along parallel with the beach, looking for the man they had marooned. He was nowhere in sight, and they finally headed out into the lake towards Orlog, which they could just see dimly on the further shore.

The breeze was fresh, and they made good time. The boat steered easily, and the Very Young Man, reclining on one elbow, with Aura at his feet, felt at peace with himself and with the world. Again he thought this girl the prettiest he had ever seen. There was something, too, of a spiritual quality in the delicate smallness of her features--a sweetness of expression in her quick, understanding smile, and an honest clearness in her steady gaze that somehow he seemed never to have seen in a girl’s face before.

He felt again, now that he had time to think more of her, that same old diffidence that had come to him before when they were alone in the storeroom of her home. That she did not share this feeling was obvious from the frankness and ease of her manner.

For some time after leaving the island neither spoke. The Very Young Man felt the girl’s eyes fixed almost constantly upon him--a calm gaze that held in it a great curiosity and wonderment. He steered steadily onward towards Orlog. There was, for the moment, nothing to discuss concerning their adventure, and he wondered what he should say to this girl who stared at him so frankly. Then he met her eyes, and again she smiled with that perfect sense of comradeship he had so seldom felt with women of his own race.

“You’re very beautiful,” said the Very Young Man abruptly.

The girl’s eyes widened a little, but she did not drop her lashes. “I want to be beautiful; if you think it is so, I am very glad.”

“I do. I think you’re the prettiest girl I ever saw.” He blurted out the words impetuously. He was very earnest, very sincere, and very young.

A trace of coquetry came into the girl’s manner. “Prettier than the girls of your world? Are they not pretty?”

“Oh, yes--of course; but----”

“What?” she asked when he paused.

The Very Young Man considered a moment. “You’re--you’re different,” he said finally. She waited. “You--you don’t know how to flirt, for one thing.”

The girl turned her head away and looked at him a little sidewise through lowered lashes.

“How do you know that?” she asked demurely; and the Very Young Man admitted to himself with a shock of surprise that he certainly was totally wrong in that deduction at least.

“Tell me of the girls in your world,” she went on after a moment’s silence. “My sister’s husband many times he has told me of the wonderful things up there in that great land. But more I would like to hear.”

He told her, with an eloquence and enthusiasm born of youth, about his own life and those of his people. She questioned eagerly and with an intelligence that surprised him, for she knew far more of the subject than he realized.

“These girls of your country,” she interrupted him once. “They, too, are very beautiful; they wear fine clothes--I know--my brother he has told me.”

“Yes,” said the Very Young Man.

“And are they very learned--very clever--do they work and govern, like the men?”

“Some are very learned. And they are beginning to govern, like the men; but not so much as you do here.”

The girl’s forehead wrinkled. “My brother he once told me,” she said slowly, “that in your world many women are bad. Is that so?”

“Some are, of course. And some men think that most are. But I don’t; I think women are splendid.”

“If that is so, then better I can understand what I have heard,” the girl answered thoughtfully. “If Oroid women were as I have heard my brother talk of some of yours, this world of ours would soon be full of evil.”

“You are different,” the Very Young Man said quickly. “You--and Lylda.”

“The women here, they have kept the evil out of life,” the girl went on. “It is their duty--their responsibility to their race. Your good women--they have not always governed as we have. Why is that?”

“I do not know,” the Very Young Man admitted. “Except because the men would not let them.”

“Why not, if they are just as learned as the men?” The girl was smiling--a little roguish, twisted smile.

“There are very clever girls,” the Very Young Man went on hastily; he found himself a little on the defensive, and he did not know just why. “They are able to do things in the world. But--many men do not like them.”