Martians love.
There was no tramp of busy feet, for no one was busy; no clank of
swords or armour in those peaceful streets, for no one was warlike; no
hustle, for no one hurried; no wide-packed asses nodding down the
lanes, for there was nothing to fill their packs with, and though a
cart sometimes came by with a load of lolling men and maids, or a small
horse, for horses they had, paced along, itself nearly as lazy as the
master he bore, with trappings sewed over bits of coloured shell and
coral, yet somehow it was all extraordinarily unreal. It was a city
full of the ghosts of the life which once pulsed through its ways. The
streets were peopled, the chatter of voices everywhere, the singing
boys and laughing girls wandering, arms linked together, down the ways
filled every echo with their merriment, yet somehow it was all so
shallow that again and again I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I were
indeed awake, or whether it were not a prolonged sleep of which the
tomorrow were still to come.

"What strikes me as strangest of all, good comrade," I observed
pleasantly to the tripping presence at my elbow, "is that these
countrymen of yours who shirk to climb a flight of steps, and have
palms as soft as rose petals, these wide ways paved with stones as hard
as a usurer's heart."

An laughed. "The stones were still in their native quarries had it
been left to us to seek them; we are like the conies in the ruins, sir,
the inheritors of what other hands have done."

"Ay, and undone, I think, as well, for coming along I have noted axe
chippings upon the walls, smudges of ancient fire and smoke upon the
cornices."

An winced a little and stared uneasily at the walls, muttering below
her breath something about trying to hide with flower garlands the
marks they could not banish, but it was plain the conversation was not
pleasing to her. So unpleasant was talk or sight of woodmen
(Thither-folk, as she called them, in contradiction to the Hither
people about us here), that the girl was clearly relieved when we were
free of the town and out into the open playground of the people. The
whole place down there was a gay, shifting crowd. The booths of
yesterday, the arcades, the archways, were still standing, and during
the night unknown hands had redecked them with flowers, while another
day's sunshine had opened the coppice buds so that the whole place was
brilliant past expression. And here the Hither folk were varying their