the professor, I became convinced
that he was innocent of any such amorous intentions, and that he had
learned, or believed he had learned, the word for "love" simply in
pursuances of the method by which he meant to acquire the language of
the girl.

There was one thing which gave some of us considerable misgivings, and
that was the question whether, after all, the language the professor was
acquiring was really the girl's own tongue or one that she had learned
from the Martians.

But the professor bade us rest easy on that point. He assured us, in the
first place, that this girl could not be the only human being living
upon Mars, but that she must have friends and relatives there. That
being so, they unquestionably had a language of their own, which they
spoke when they were among themselves. Here finding herself among beings
belonging to her own race, she would naturally speak her own tongue and
not that which she had acquired from the Martians.

"Moreover, gentlemen," he added, "I have in her speech many roots of the
great Aryan tongue already recognized."

We were greatly relieved by this explanation, which seemed to all of us
perfectly satisfactory.

Yet, really, there was no reason why one language should be any better
than the other for our present purpose. In fact, it might be more useful
to us to know the language of the Martians themselves. Still, we all
felt that we should prefer to know her language rather than that of the
monsters among whom she had lived.

Colonel Smith expressed what was in all our minds when, after listening
to the reasoning of the Professor, he blurted out:

"Thank God, she doesn't speak any of their blamed lingo! By Jove, it
would soil her pretty lips."

"But also that she speaks, too," said the man from Heidelberg, turning
to Colonel Smith with a grin. "We shall both of them eventually learn."

Three entire weeks were passed in this manner. After the first week the
girl herself materially assisted the linguists in their efforts to
ac-quire her speech.

At length the task was so far advanced that we could, in a certain
sense, regard it as practically completed. The Heidelberg professor
declared that he had mastered the tongue of the ancient Aryans. His
delight was unbounded. With prodigious industry he set to work, scarcely
stopping to eat or sleep, to form a grammar of the language.

"You shall see," he said, "it will the speculations of my countrymen
vindicate."

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