I had arrived at this estimate of her character by a process more unerring and far swifter than reason. You might call it spiritual telegraphy. The thought of her not only restored but immeasurably increased my faith in woman; and I fell asleep at last soothed and comforted.
I awoke in the morning to the sound of singing. It was Ariadne's voice, and she was touching the strings of a harp. All Caskians sing, and all are taught to play upon at least one musical instrument. Every household is an orchestra.
Ariadne's voice was exceptionally fine--where all voices were excellent. Its quality was singularly bird-like; sometimes it was the joyous note of the lark, and again it was the tenderly sweet, and passionately sad, dropping-song of the mocking-bird.
When I looked out of my window, the sun was just silvering the point of the Spear, and light wreaths of mist were lifting from the valleys. I saw the Master, staff in hand, going up toward the mountains, and Fides was coming across the hills.
I had wondered, when I saw the Master and his wife on the balcony the night before, how they came to be there at such an hour on such a night. I took the first opportunity to find out. The only way to find out about people's affairs in Caskia, is by asking questions, or, by observation--which takes longer. They speak with their lives instead of their tongues, concerning so many things that other people are wordy about. They are quite devoid of theories. But they are charmingly willing to impart what one wishes to know.
I learned that Clytia's parents lived within a stone's throw of her house on one side, and Calypso's grandparents at about the same distance on the other. And I also learned that it was an arrangement universally practiced; the clustering together of families, in order that the young might always be near at hand to support, and protect, and to smooth the pathway of the old. Certain savage races upon the Earth abandon the aged to starvation and death; certain other races, not savage, abandon them to a loneliness that is only less cruel. But these extraordinarily just people repay to the helplessness of age, the tenderness and care, the loving sympathy, which they themselves received in the helplessness of infancy.