The girl turned her head away and looked at him a little sidewise through lowered lashes.
"How do you know that?" she asked demurely; and the Very Young Man admitted to himself with a shock of surprise that he certainly was totally wrong in that deduction at least.
"Tell me of the girls in your world," she went on after a moment's silence. "My sister's husband many times he has told me of the wonderful things up there in that great land. But more I would like to hear."
He told her, with an eloquence and enthusiasm born of youth, about his own life and those of his people. She questioned eagerly and with an intelligence that surprised him, for she knew far more of the subject than he realized.
"These girls of your country," she interrupted him once. "They, too, are very beautiful; they wear fine clothes--I know--my brother he has told me."
"And are they very learned--very clever--do they work and govern, like the men?"
"Some are very learned. And they are beginning to govern, like the men; but not so much as you do here."
The girl's forehead wrinkled. "My brother he once told me," she said slowly, "that in your world many women are bad. Is that so?"
"Some are, of course. And some men think that most are. But I don't; I think women are splendid."
"If that is so, then better I can understand what I have heard," the girl answered thoughtfully. "If Oroid women were as I have heard my brother talk of some of yours, this world of ours would soon be full of evil."
"You are different," the Very Young Man said quickly. "You--and Lylda."
"The women here, they have kept the evil out of life," the girl went on. "It is their duty--their responsibility to their race. Your good women--they have not always governed as we have. Why is that?"
"I do not know," the Very Young Man admitted. "Except because the men would not let them."
"Why not, if they are just as learned as the men?" The girl was smiling--a little roguish, twisted smile.
"There are very clever girls," the Very Young Man went on hastily; he found himself a little on the defensive, and he did not know just why. "They are able to do things in the world. But--many men do not like them."
Aura was smiling openly now, and her eyes twinkled with mischief. "Perhaps it is the men are jealous. Could that not be so?"