But the enchantment of Sobul was not merely the wizardry of its woods and open spaces, its colors and silences and eagle heights. There was a more potent sorcery of twinkling eyes and caressing words that was fettering me in soft, indissoluble bonds--a sorcery that might have proved powerful in any land on earth. And the priestess of that sorcery was Yasma. Perhaps she did not realize the fateful part she was playing, for was not she, as I, swept along by a dark current there was no resisting? And yet she enacted her role remorselessly as though assigned the lead in a cosmic drama; and, blinded herself by the unseen powers, she could not have realized how certainly and how tragically she was intertwining her fate with mine. From the first I had been charmed by her open manner and her evident lack of self-consciousness. She had been free as a child in talking and laughing and romping with me, and I had tried to think of her as a child, and little more,--undeniably a fascinating playmate, but certainly not a serious companion for a thirty-three-year-old geologist. But if I had imagined that I could dismiss her so easily, I was merely deluding myself; the time was to come, and to come very swiftly, when I should realize how much more than a child she was. Possibly it is that the girls of the Ibandru come early to maturity; or possibly they do not labor under civilized repressions, and are seldom other than their natural selves. At all events, Yasma suffered from few of those inhibitions which would have hampered her western sisters. Finding something in me to interest her, she was at no pains to conceal her interest, but would act as unhesitatingly as if she had been the man and I the woman. At first, during my illness, I had attributed this to mere kindness; later I had ascribed it to a natural curiosity as to a stranger from a strange land; but there came a time when I could no longer believe her motives purely impersonal, and when, while knowing that she acted without design, I had inklings that she was rushing with me toward a fire in which we might both be singed. Why, then, did I not try to forestall our mad dash toward the flames? Surely I, who was older and more experienced, was also somewhat wiser; surely I might have prevented complications that she could not even foresee. Ah, yes!--but love has queer ways, and makes a jest of men's reason, and tosses their best intentions about like spindrift ... and I was but subject to the frailties of human-kind. Writing at this late date, I find it hard to say just why I did what I did (even at the time, would I have known?); and it is impossible to explain why she did what she did. But let me recount a few incidents; let me describe as well as I can the growth of that strange, wild love, which even now torments me in recollection.