That was all; but those few words embodied such a wealth of sympathy and understanding that, like some miraculous balm, they soothed the agony of my tortured heart. No one but Tavia could have spoken them. I turned and taking one of her little hands in mine, I pressed it to my lips. "Loved friend," I said. "Thanks be to all my ancestors that it was not you." I do not know what made me say that. The words seemed to speak themselves without my volition, and yet when they were spoken there came to me a sudden realization of the horror that I would have felt had it been Tavia who had betrayed me. I could not even contemplate it without an agony of pain. Impulsively I took her in my arms. "Tavia," I cried, "promise me that you will never desert me. I could not live without you." She put her strong, young arms about my neck and clung to me. "Never this side of death," she whispered, and then she tore herself from me and I saw that she was weeping. What a friend! I knew that I could never again love a woman, but what cared I for that if I could have Tavia's friendship for life. "We shall never part again, Tavia," I said. "If our ancestors are kind and we are permitted to return to Helium, you shall find a home in the house of my father and a mother in my mother." She dried her eyes and looked at me with a strange wistful expression that I could not fathom, and then, through her tears, she smiled--that odd, quizzical little smile that I had seen before and that I did not understand any more than I understood a dozen of her moods and expressions, which made her so different from other girls and which, I think, helped to attract me toward her. Her characteristics lay not all upon the surface--there were depths and under-currents which one might not easily fathom. Sometimes when I expected her to cry, she laughed; and when I thought that she should be happy, she wept, but she never wept as I have seen other women weep--never hysterically, for Tavia never lost control of herself, but quietly as though from a full heart rather than from over-wrought nerves, and through her tears there might burst a smile at the end. I think that Tavia was quite the most wonderful girl that I have ever known and as I had come to know her better and see more of her, I had grown to realize that despite her attempt at mannish disguise to which she still clung, she was quite the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. Her beauty was not like that of Sanoma Tora, but as she looked up into my face now the realization came to me quite suddenly, and for what reason I do not know, that the beauty of Tavia far transcended that of Sanoma Tora because of the beauty of the soul that, shining through her eyes, transfigured her whole countenance.