To this I would reply that I had no intention of wrecking the country; that I was trying to further its interests according to my own lights. And Aelios, while not convinced that my own lights were the right ones, would at least admit that my motives were sincere; and having reached this halfway point of agreement, we would invariably turn to less provocative subjects. But despite her disapproval of my Emergence views, I had reason to be encouraged by her attitude toward me. I saw her, while not often, at least often enough to be assured of her friendship; and now and then I caught in her eyes a bright, warm light which intimated that what she felt might be more than friendship. Yet it may merely have been that my desires passed judgment for me, for not by a word or a gesture did she give evidence that she regarded me otherwise than as one kindly disposed human being may regard another; and the occasional hints of some gentler emotion were so rare and so fleeting that I could not be sure. And so, as best I could, I restrained my impatience, at first never seriously believing that I could aspire to her height, then gradually fanning faint hopes that remained concealed beneath the mantle of my diffidence. It was long before we even approached the subject of love; and meanwhile, we would speak of impersonal things, or personal things securely buried in the past, and nothing in my words would give hint of the passion flaming to life within me, while in her words I saw the traces only of a vivid and beauty-loving mind serenely unconscious of sex. * * * * * But even in Atlantis it was impossible that we should continue to see one another and yet retain a merely placid brother-and-sister attitude. How it was with her I do not know, but I was the son of a world whose passions burn gustily and strong; and I was becoming almost painfully obsessed with the thought of her, and would be given to long fits of melancholy in her absence, while at times in her presence I would be tantalized by her passionless calm, and would feel the old sweet primitive prompting to slip my arms about her, and enfold her as one might enfold the Ultimate. But always I would restrain myself, for how be sure of the reaction of this daughter of an alien civilization? How be sure that embraces and caresses would not be repulsive to the Atlanteans? And so, though possessed by the thought of her, as by some exquisite perfume that provokes and allures, I repressed my eagerness for many, many months, awaiting that opportunity which in the end, I felt sure, time and circumstance must provide. And in the end my patience was rewarded, and I was favored unexpectedly by one of those occasions which life, if left quietly to itself, seems usually to offer to lovers.