le that it had been hours since
I had either eaten or drunk. The yellow flagons were set before Larry
and me, the purple at Rador's hand.

The girls, at his signal, again withdrew. I raised my glass to my
lips and took a deep draft. The taste was unfamiliar but delightful.

Almost at once my fatigue disappeared. I realized a clarity of mind,
an interesting exhilaration and sense of irresponsibility, of freedom
from care, that were oddly enjoyable. Larry became immediately his old
gay self.

The green dwarf regarded us whimsically, sipping from his great flagon
of rock crystal.

"Much do I desire to know of that world you came from," he said at
last--"through the rocks," he added, slyly.

"And much do we desire to know of this world of yours, O Rador," I
answered.

Should I ask him of the Dweller; seek from him a clue to Throckmartin?
Again, clearly as a spoken command, came the warning to forbear, to
wait. And once more I obeyed.

"Let us learn, then, from each other." The dwarf was laughing. "And
first--are all above like you--drawn out"--he made an expressive
gesture--"and are there many of you?"

"There are--" I hesitated, and at last spoke the Polynesian that means
tens upon tens multiplied indefinitely--"there are as many as the
drops of water in the lake we saw from the ledge where you found us,"
I continued; "many as the leaves on the trees without. And they are
all like us--varyingly."

He considered skeptically, I could see, my remark upon our numbers.

"In Muria," he said at last, "the men are like me or like Lugur. Our
women are as you see them--like Yolara or those two who served you."
He hesitated. "And there is a third; but only one."

Larry leaned forward eagerly.

"Brown-haired with glints of ruddy bronze, golden-eyed, and lovely as
a dream, with long, slender, beautiful hands?" he cried.

"Where saw you _her_?" interrupted the dwarf, starting to his feet.

"Saw her?" Larry recovered himself. "Nay, Rador, perhaps, I only
dreamed that there was such a woman."

"See to it, then, that you tell not your dream to Yolara," said the
dwarf grimly. "For her I meant and her you have pictured is Lakla, the
hand-maiden to the Silent Ones, and neither Yolara nor Lugur, nay, nor
the Shining One, love her overmuch, stranger."

"Does she dwell here?" Larry's face was alight.

The dwarf hesitated, glanced about him anxiously.

"Nay," he answered, "ask me no more of her." He was silent for a
s