passed for
good-looking amongst the people I came from, the handsomest of my
countrymen might have seemed insignificant and homely beside the grand
and serene type of beauty which characterised the aspect of the Vril-ya.

That novelty, the very difference between myself and those to whom Zee
was accustomed, might serve to bias her fancy was probable enough, and
as the reader will see later, such a cause might suffice to account for
the predilection with which I was distinguished by a young Gy scarcely
out of her childhood, and very inferior in all respects to Zee. But
whoever will consider those tender characteristics which I have just
ascribed to the daughter of Aph-Lin, may readily conceive that the main
cause of my attraction to her was in her instinctive desire to cherish,
to comfort, to protect, and, in protecting, to sustain and to exalt.
Thus, when I look back, I account for the only weakness unworthy of
her lofty nature, which bowed the daughter of the Vril-ya to a woman's
affection for one so inferior to herself as was her father's guest. But
be the cause what it may, the consciousness that I had inspired such
affection thrilled me with awe--a moral awe of her very imperfections,
of her mysterious powers, of the inseparable distinctions between her
race and my own; and with that awe, I must confess to my shame, there
combined the more material and ignoble dread of the perils to which her
preference would expose me.

Under these anxious circumstances, fortunately, my conscience and sense
of honour were free from reproach. It became clearly my duty, if Zee's
preference continued manifest, to intimate it to my host, with, of
course, all the delicacy which is ever to be preserved by a well-bred
man in confiding to another any degree of favour by which one of the
fair sex may condescend to distinguish him. Thus, at all events,
I should be freed from responsibility or suspicion of voluntary
participation in the sentiments of Zee; and the superior wisdom of
my host might probably suggest some sage extrication from my perilous
dilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the ordinary instinct of civilised and
moral man, who, erring though he be, still generally prefers the right
course in those cases where it is obviously against his inclinations,
his interests, and his safety to elect the wrong one.

Chapter XXII.

As the reader has seen, Aph-Lin had not favoured my general and
unrestricted intercourse with his country