ran sage of the College perplexed and wearied with the toil of
an abstruse study? she would patiently devote herself to his aid, work
out details for him, sustain his spirits with her hopeful smile, quicken
his wit with her luminous suggestion, be to him, as it were, his own
good genius made visible as the strengthener and inspirer. The same
tenderness she exhibited to the inferior creatures. I have often known
her bring home some sick and wounded animal, and tend and cherish it as
a mother would tend and cherish her stricken child. Many a time when I
sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have
watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments
groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with
joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that
she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with
her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would
scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress
of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical
whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion
among 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 wand
they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This
serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their
wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the
dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee's thoughtful majesty of face
lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to
be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision
of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel
for 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 influences
his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he
feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what
strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the
supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all
other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me
with her preference? In personal qualifications, though I