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It was now so dark that the flames fairly illumined their faces. Shortly one or two got up courage enough to imitate Dulnop as he "fed the flower;" and presently there were several little fires burning merrily upon the ground. As for the aborigines, they let themselves loose; never before did they shout and dance as they shouted and danced that night. It was this Rolla and Cunora heard.
Cunora lost her nerve, and Rolls came near to doing the same in her efforts to comfort the other. "They are heartless things!" Rolla exclaimed with such bitterness as her nature would permit. "They know not what love is: They with their drones and their egg-babes! What is family life to Them? Nothing! "Somehow I feel that Their reign is nearly at an end, Cunora.
"It be a shame that we cannot come hence a great deal oftener! Methinks They could allow it!" "They care not for our longings," spoke Cunora, her eyes flashing as angrily as his. "They give us enough freedom to make us work the better no more! All They care for is thy herd and my crops!" "And for the labor," reminded the big man, "of such brains as Rolla's and Dulnop's.
Then, from some place in his garments he produced a tiny stick of white wood, with a tip made of some dark-red material. This he held before mine eyes, in the dream; and then spake very reassuringly, as though bidding me not to be afraid. "Well he might! Cunora, he took that tiny stick in his hand and moved the tip along the surface of the trough; and, behold, a miracle!"
"What!" fiercely, from the younger. Corrus laid a hand upon his arm. "Nay, Dulnop; fear not. I have no feeling for thy Cunora; I may marry her, but as for fathering her children no!" "Suppose," through set teeth, "suppose They should threaten to kill thee?" "I should rather die, Dulnop, than be untrue to Rolla!" The younger man bounded to his feet. "Spoken like a man!
They would not absent themselves unless they knew something! Find them, and torture them into revealing the secret! We must weed out this flowing blossom forever!" "It shall be done!" Such methods were well known to Rolla and Cunora. Had not their fellow villagers, many of them, tried time after time to escape from bondage?
Each villager stared at the offenders, and at something which lay on the ground before them, and in sober silence went straight to his or her work in the fields. Presently the huts were deserted. All the people were on duty elsewhere. Such bees as were not guarding the fields had returned to the hives. Rolla and Cunora cautiously ventured forth, taking great care to avoid being seen.
"Holding this big blooming stick in one hand, he gave me his other; and it seemed as though I floated through the air by his side. Presently we came to the place where Corrus's herd lay sleeping. The angel smote one of the cows with the flat of his hand, so that it got upon its feet; and straighway the stranger thrust the flowing blossom into its face. "The cow shrank back, Cunora!
"Ye must take me for a simple one, to believe such imagining." Rolla became even more earnest. "Yet it were more than imagining, Cunora; 'twere too vivid and impressive for only that. As for the leaves, the blossoming swiftly spread until it covered every bit of the pile; and I tell thee that the bloom flowed as high as thy hand!
Or were They, as the books from Venus seemed to indicate, another type of creature, entirely different from the humans, and yet, because of the peculiar Sanusian conditions, superior to the humans? "They have decided to move their city a little farther away from the forest," Rolla overheard Dulnop telling Cunora; which was the first indication that the planet boasted such a thing as a city.
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