The conversation carried on between the brother and sister--in which I could take no more part than a deaf-mute--was, I felt sure, extremely entertaining if not important. My eyes served me well,--for one sense is quick to assume the burdens of another,--and I knew that the talk was not mere banter, nor was it simply the necessary exchange of words and opinions about everyday matters which must take place in families periodically, concerning fuel, and provisions, and servants, and water-tax, and the like. It took a much higher range. The faces of both were animated, their eyes beamed brightly upon each other. It was clear that the brother did not talk down to her understanding, rather he talked up to it,--or no, they were on a level with each other, the highest level of both, for they held each other up to their best. However, Elodia had been away for a couple of days, I learned, and absence gives a bloom of newness which it is delightful to brush off. I did not detect any of the quality we call chivalry in Severnius' pose, nor of its complement in hers. Though one would hardly expect that between brothers and sisters anywhere. Still, we have a way with our near women relations which never ignores the distinction between the sexes; we humor them, patronize them, tyrannize over them. And they defer to, and exalt us, and usually acknowledge our superiority. It was not so with this pair. They respected and honored each other equally. And there was a charming _camaraderie_ between them, the same as if they had both been men--or women, if you single out the right kind. They held widely different opinions upon many subjects, but they never crowded them upon each other. Their tastes were dissimilar. For one thing, Elodia had not her brother's fine religious sense. She seldom entered the sanctuary, though once or twice I saw her there, seated far apart from Severnius and myself. Stimulated by the hope of some day being able to talk with her, and of convincing her that I was a person not altogether beneath her intelligence, I devoted myself, mind and soul, to the Paleverian language. In six weeks I could read and write it fairly well. Severnius was untiring in his teaching; and every day strengthened my regard for him as a man. He was an accomplished scholar, and he was as clean-souled as a child,--but not weakly or ignorantly so. He knew evil as well as good; but he renounced the one and accepted the other. He was a man "appointed by Almighty God to stand for a fact." And I never knew him to weaken his position by defending it. Often we spent hours in the observatory together. It was a glorious thing to me to watch the splendid fleet of asteroids sailing between Jupiter and Mars, and to single out the variously colored moons of Jupiter, and to distinguish with extraordinary clearness a thousand other wonders but dimly seen from the Earth.