f fun, as
well as higher comradeship.

Then, as I got on farther, the palace and treasures and snowy mountain
ranges opened up. I had never known there could be such a human being.
So--great. I don't mean talented. She was a forester--one of the
best--but it was not that gift I mean. When I say GREAT, I mean
great--big, all through. If I had known more of those women, as
intimately, I should not have found her so unique; but even among them
she was noble. Her mother was an Over Mother--and her grandmother, too,
I heard later.

So she told me more and more of her beautiful land; and I told her as
much, yes, more than I wanted to, about mine; and we became inseparable.
Then this deeper recognition came and grew. I felt my own soul rise
and lift its wings, as it were. Life got bigger. It seemed as if I
understood--as I never had before--as if I could Do things--as if I too
could grow--if she would help me. And then It came--to both of us, all
at once.

A still day--on the edge of the world, their world. The two of us,
gazing out over the far dim forestland below, talking of heaven and
earth and human life, and of my land and other lands and what they
needed and what I hoped to do for them--

"If you will help me," I said.

She turned to me, with that high, sweet look of hers, and then, as her
eyes rested in mine and her hands too--then suddenly there blazed out
between us a farther glory, instant, overwhelming--quite beyond any
words of mine to tell.

Celis was a blue-and-gold-and-rose person; Alma,
black-and-white-and-red, a blazing beauty. Ellador was brown: hair dark
and soft, like a seal coat; clear brown skin with a healthy red in
it; brown eyes--all the way from topaz to black velvet they seemed to
range--splendid girls, all of them.

They had seen us first of all, far down in the lake below, and flashed
the tidings across the land even before our first exploring flight. They
had watched our landing, flitted through the forest with us, hidden in
that tree and--I shrewdly suspect--giggled on purpose.

They had kept watch over our hooded machine, taking turns at it; and
when our escape was announced, had followed along-side for a day or two,
and been there at the last, as described. They felt a special claim on
us--called us "their men"--and when we were at liberty to study the land
and people, and be studied by them, their claim was recognized by the
wise leaders.

But I felt, we all did, that we should h