After this, Gven sat silent, his face burning, and the rest of us began to talk of the relation between the sites of mines and the locations of proving grounds.
For many days, I watched Gven covertly. He no longer seemed to care about our rebuffs, nor did he show any desire to ask us questions. He only sat by the panels, his expression withdrawn and intent, while the rest of us hustled busily and a little self-consciously around him. I came to notice a certain perplexity in his face after a time, and felt that I should ask if he needed any assistance. But I was awkward and unsure of myself, so I only watched him and said nothing. At last he came to me, having built up a powerful reserve of feeling that overflowed with the more violence for having been repressed so long.
"There is something that is to happen in the life of my Maria Dolores," Gven began directly.
Unaccountably, I tensed and tried to suppress the warmth I felt toward him. "Well, what is it then?" I answered.
He seemed not to notice the strain I was under. "They have told her she is to be married to a young man whom they have chosen for her. She is unhappy, but cannot tell them. Now they are making many preparations. Maria Dolores spends her time with her mother, sewing dresses and packing them away. Then her mother speaks to her of things that frighten her and me, things that seem to happen when men and women are alone at night. She does not understand and lies awake when her mother has gone, afraid and wondering. We are uneasy, Maria Dolores and I."
Here, Novna, I must attempt to explain the marriage of Earth people. While with us marriage is the spiritualized union of masculine and feminine natures in one soul, it is to them a more concrete thing. Their junction is not only one of minds, but one of bodies as well.
The union seems not to be unpleasant for those who take part in it, but for us, who so jealously guard our bodies from another's touch, the marriage of Earth people is difficult to contemplate without revulsion.
I was rescued from having to answer Gven by the laughter of Corven, who had overheard the last of the poet's words. "Well then, poet, if she is unhappy, you must take her away, mustn't you? That's what you want, it seems, to take her away to Hainos and make her your Gvna."
Gven stood up and glared angrily at Corven. "Would it be so bad a thing to carry back one person of Earth? Why shouldn't we?" he flung at the other man.
Corven turned away in disgust. "You know we have no authority to intervene in their affairs. This is what comes of letting a poet-priest meddle in the concerns of science."