Having delivered herself of this outburst, Yasma paced back and forth, back and forth amid the dense grass, with fists clenched and head upraised to the heavens, like one in an extremity of distress. But I quickly arose and went to her, and in a moment she was again in my arms. Truly, as Karem had declared, the ways of women are not to be explained! But I felt that there was more meaning than I had discovered in her behavior; I was sure that she had not acted altogether without reason, and, remembering all that had puzzled me, I was determined to probe if possible to the roots of her seeming caprice. "You have never been the same to me since the firelight celebration," I said, when her emotion had spent itself and we once more sat quietly side by side in the grass. "Maybe something happened then to make you despise me." "No, not to make me despise you!" she denied, emphatically. "It was not your fault at all!" "Then what was it?" I urged. "Nothing. Only that Hamul--Hamul--" In manifest confusion, she checked herself. "Hamul-Kammesh?" I finished for her, convinced that here was a clue. But she refused to answer me or to mention the soothsayer again; and, lest the too-ready tears flow once more, I had to abandon the topic. None the less, I had not forgotten her references to Hamul-Kammesh and his prophecies. But I still attached no importance to the predictions--was I to be dismayed by mere superstition? I was conscious only that I felt an overwhelming tenderness toward Yasma, and that she was supremely adorable; and it seemed to me that her love was the sole thing that mattered. At her first kiss, my reason had abdicated; I was agitated no longer by scruples, doubts or hesitancies; my former objects in life appeared pallid and dull by contrast with this warm, breathing, emotional girl. For her sake I would have forsworn my chosen work, forsworn the friends I had known, forsworn name and country--yes, even doomed myself to lasting exile in this green, world-excluding valley! In as few words as possible I explained the nature of my feelings. I was able to give but pale expression to the radiance of my emotions; but I am sure that she understood. "I do not know what it is that holds you from me, Yasma," I finished. "Surely, you realize that you are dearer to me than my own breath. You made me very happy a little while ago when you came into my arms--why not make me happy for life? You could live with me here in a cabin in Sobul, or maybe I could take you with me to see the world I come from, and you would then know where the clouds go, and see strange cities with houses as tall as precipices and people many as the leaves of a tree. What do you say, Yasma? Don't you want to make us both happy?" Yasma stared at me with wide-lidded eyes in which I seemed to read infinite longing.