"That Naia of Aphur, on the day the new light comes, will wear my seal," Croft told her.
"Zitu," she exclaimed, smiling, "you have spoken, then, at last. Wise man I have confessed you, yet to me you have seemed most blind in this as most men are with women. Glad though am I for you both. But now she was in my chamber, and radiant as Ga. She declared you would teach her to fly, and easily deceived as I was, I thought it that."
After that two causes hastened Croft's arrangements for the celebration of the coming of the light. One was the renewal of his formal betrothal with Naia, of course. The other was of a wholly different sort.
As for Naia, save for the hours he spent in the shops, he was with her the greater part of the time, either teaching her the control of a plane, which she mastered quickly both on land and water, or in the laboratory, or, in the evening, sometimes speaking with her alone, sometimes with Robur and his wife. And in the laboratory, one evening shortly after the day of their first flight together, Croft spoke to her of love as he had spoken once before but with a different meaning. Taking two salts in solution, he poured them together.
"Behold," said he, as he mixed them and formed a substance compounded of their blending which fell slowly to the bottom of the glass, "behold, beloved, the chemistry of love—how each atom draws the other atom to it, until they blend and are no more, but lose themselves each one within the other to form a definite something which was not before!
"Behold—for even so, beloved, it is with the souls of men and women—each drawing the other to it; each blending with the other, until in the will of Zitu, and they are truly mated, they melt into perfect union, and a perfect spirit is born!" It was one way of portraying the doctrine of twin souls, the "marriage of the lamb," the birth into angelhood, dependent on the union of the two original spiritual halves, and Naia nodded with a widening of her eyes.
"Each draws the other to it," she said, coming close beside him. "Ah, Jason, did I draw you to me really from the earth?"
"Aye, by Zitu," he swore, and slipped an arm about her.
"Thy need of me brought you unto Palos, even as thou hast called my spirit from my flesh."