"Am I?" she said, lifting her brows. "Well, I suppose--or rather you suppose--that I am the product of my ancestry and my training." "You are, in some respects," I assented; and then I added, "I have often tried to fancy what effect our civilization would have had upon you." "What effect do you think it would have had?" she asked, with quite an unusual--I might say earthly--curiosity. "I dare not tell you," I replied, thrilling with the felicity of a talk so personal,--the first I had ever had with her. "Why not?" she demanded, with a side glance at me from under her gold-fringed shade. "It would be taking too great a liberty." "But if I pardon that?" There was an archness in her smile which was altogether womanly. What a grand opportunity, I thought, for saying some of the things I had so often wanted to say to her! but I hesitated, turning hot and then cold. "Really," I said, "I cannot. I should flatter you, and you would not like that." For the first time, I saw her face crimson to the temples. "That would be very bad taste," she replied; "flattery being the last resort--when it is found that there is nothing in one to compliment. Silence is better; you have commendable tact." "Pardon my stupid blunder!" I cried; "you cannot think I meant that! Flattery is exaggerated, absurd, unmeaning praise, and no praise, the highest, the best, could do you justice, could--" She broke in with a disdainful laugh: "A woman can always compel a pretty speech from a man, you see,--even in Mars!" "You did not compel it," I rejoined earnestly, "if I but dared,--if you would allow me to tell you what I think of you, how highly I regard--" She made a gesture which cut short my eloquence, and we walked on in silence. Whenever there has been a disturbance in the moral atmosphere, there is nothing like silence to restore the equilibrium. I, watching furtively, saw the slight cloud pass from her face, leaving the intelligent serenity it usually wore. But still she did not speak. However, there was nothing ominous in that, she was never troubled with an uneasy desire to keep conversation going. On top of the hill there were benches, and we sat down. It was one of those still afternoons in summer when nature seems to be taking a siesta. Overhead it was like the heart of a rose. The soft, white, cottony clouds we often see suspended in our azure ether, floated--as soft, as white, as fleecy--in the pink skies of Mars. Elodia closed her parasol and laid it across her lap and leaned her head back against the tree in whose shade we were. It was an acute pleasure, a rapture indeed, to sit so near to her and alone with her, out of hearing of all the world. But she was calmly unconscious, her gaze wandering dreamily through half-shut lids over the wide landscape, which included forests and fields and meadows, and many windings of the river, for we had a high point of observation. I presently broke the silence with a bold, perhaps an inexcusable question,