"What is the meaning of 'flirt,' lady?" asked Polaris.
Rose Emer's answer was a silvery laugh. "Sometimes, in your cold and snows, your knowledge makes me feel like a child; but when you get back to where I came from you will have a great deal to learn," she said lightly.
In spite of the privations and terrors through which she had passed, and the grief at the loss of her brother, the spirits of Rose Emer were rising amazingly in the warmth and sunshine of Sardanes. For all her lightness of speech, the girl could not but feel alarmed at the expression she had read in the eyes of the Prince Helicon, although she would not admit to Polaris that she had taken note of it.
They crossed the little bridge again and the plain beyond it, and began the ascent of the one green mountain that stood verdure-clad in strange contrast to its score of bleak-crowned sisters.
"What do they mean by the 'Gateway to the Future,' Polaris?" asked the girl.
Polaris, in turn, put the question to Kalin.
"It lieth before us," said the priest, pointing to the green mountainside. "Hast thou not noted that in all Sardanes no man or woman is old, or crooked of body, or diseased? When the first chills of age creep upon a Sardanian and bow his form and whiten his hair, then he cometh to me and passeth through the gateway. Thither likewise come the dead when one dieth in the land through a mischance or sudden illness. To me also are brought the babes that are misshapen at birth or that give promise of but puny life.
"To that which lieth beyond life, be it of glory or of oblivion, all Sardanians pass through the Gateway to the Future; and I, Kalin, am guardian to the gateway. The gateway itself shalt thou see anon."
Polaris translated. Rose Emer shuddered. "And I thought them such a happy people!" she said. "How can they be with such strange, terrible customs?"
Kalin, it seemed, had the trick of reading people's thoughts, for he answered: