to do? Will you kindly tell me Edra's age?"

"Edra? I forget. Oh yes; she is sixty-three."

"Sixty-three! I'll be shot if she's a day more than twenty-eight! Idiot
that I am, why can't I keep calm! But, Yoletta, how you distress me! It
almost frightens me to ask another question, but do tell me how old your
father is?"

"He is nearly two hundred years old--a hundred and ninety-eight, I
think," she replied.

"Heavens on earth--I shall go stark, staring mad!" But I could say no
more; leaving her side I sat down on a low stone at some distance, with
a stunned feeling in my brain, and something like despair in my heart.
That she had told me the truth I could no longer doubt for one moment:
it was impossible for her crystal nature to be anything but truthful.
The number of her years mattered nothing to me; the virgin sweetness of
girlhood was on her lips, the freshness and glory of early youth on her
forehead; the misery was that she had lived thirty-one years in the
world and did not understand the words I had spoken to her--did not know
what love, or passion, was! Would it always be so--would my heart
consume itself to ashes, and kindle no fire in hers?

Then, as I sat there, filled with these despairing thoughts, she came
down from her perch, and, dropping on her knees before me, put her arms
about my neck and gazed steadily into my face. "Why are you troubled,
Smith-have I said anything to hurt you?" said she. "And do you not know
that you have offended me?"