"Come, tell me more about your past," I requested, reverting to our original topic. "Have you always been so solitary? Have you had no companions?" "I have always had companions, but have always been solitary," she declared, as though unconscious of the paradox. "Yet what are companions if you cannot tell them what is in your heart? What are companions if you stand looking with them at the sunset, and you feel its loveliness till the tears come, and they feel nothing at all? Or what are companions if you watch the birds twittering in the treetops, and are glad they are living and happy, while your friends wish to mangle them with stones, and laugh at your softness and folly? I would not have you think that we Ibandru are of the kind that would harm little birds; only that my kinsmen and I do not have the same thoughts. I suppose it is my own stupidity and strangeness that makes all the difference." "No, your own natural wisdom makes all the difference." "I wonder," she mused, as she absently toyed with the decaying dead leaves that coated the rich dank soil. "I have tried to be like the others, but never could be. I would always speak about things they did not seem to understand; and they would jest about things that were sacred to me. I would be interested in the bee and the grasshopper, the crawling little worm and the bird that flies like the storm-wind; but they would not care, and would not often join me in my rambles through the woods, for I might pause too long to make friends with some new flower, or to watch the ants as they swarmed into one of their wonderful earthen houses. Oh, they are marvelous, the things I have seen! But the others have not seen them, and think me queer for noticing them at all!" "Never mind, Yasma," I whispered, consolingly. "I do not think you queer. I think you clever indeed." "Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried, clapping her little hands together happily. "You're the first who ever said that!" "Come, come now, certainly not the first," I denied. "Surely, some of the others--say, your father--" "No, not father! He's very, very good to me, of course, but he's like all the men--imagines that the great god of the flowering spring, and the god of the ripening fall, who put women into the world, had only one use for them. And he thinks I'm growing old enough to--" Abruptly Yasma halted, as though she feared to tread on unsafe ground. Her fingers still fumbled among the dead leaves, while her averted eyes searched the dense, dark masses of foliage as if in pursuit of something elusive and much desired. "But I've told you enough about myself," she resumed, hastily, in a half whisper. "Now it's your turn to speak about yourself." Though I would have done all I could to please her, I was still at a loss for a reply. Embarrassed at my own speechlessness after her frank recital, I wasted much time in telling her that I really had nothing to tell.