“Yes, that is true,” he answered. “She gleans her ideas from a large and varied field.”
“I do not mean her ideas, so much as—well, as the delicious flavor of her presence and personality.”
“Her presence and her personality would not have much flavor, my friend, if she had no ideas, I am thinking.”
“O, yes, they would,” I insisted. “They are the ether in which our own thoughts expand and take shape and color. They are the essence of her supreme beauty.”
He shook his head. “Beauty is nothing without intelligence. What is the camellia beside the rose? Elodia is the rose. She has several pleasing qualities that appeal to you at one and the same time.”
This was rather pretty, but a man’s praises of his sister always sound tame to me. “She is adorable!” I cried with fervor. We were walking toward a depot connected with a great railway. For the first time I was to try the speed of a Marsian train. Severnius wanted me to visit the city of Frambesco, some two hundred miles from Thursia, in another state.
After a short, ruminating silence I broke out again:
“We don’t even have her company evenings, to any extent. What does she do with her evenings?”
“Who? O, Elodia! Why, she goes to her club. For recreation, you know.”
“That is complimentary to you and me,” I said coolly.