ousand feet above its
silvery base, and the diameter of its circular foundation was about
the same.

I wondered what was bringing the _ladala_ into Lora, and where they
were vanishing. All of them were flower-crowned with the luminous,
lovely blooms--old and young, slender, mocking-eyed girls, dwarfed
youths, mothers with their babes, gnomed oldsters--on they poured,
silent for the most part and sullen--a sullenness that held acid
bitterness even as their subtle, half-sinister, half-gay malice seemed
tempered into little keen-edged flames, oddly, menacingly defiant.

There were many of the green-clad soldiers along the way, and the
garrison of the only bridge span I could see had certainly been
doubled.

Wondering still, I turned from my point of observation and made my way
back to our pavilion, hoping that Larry, who had been with Yolara for
the past two hours, had returned. Hardly had I reached it before Rador
came hurrying up, in his manner a curious exultance mingled with what
in anyone else I would have called a decided nervousness.

"Come!" he commanded before I could speak. "The Council has made
decision--and _Larree_ is awaiting you."

"What has been decided?" I panted as we sped along the mosaic path
that led to the house of Yolara. "And why is Larry awaiting me?"

And at his answer I felt my heart pause in its beat and through me
race a wave of mingled panic and eagerness.

"The Shining One dances!" had answered the green dwarf. "And you are
to worship!"

What was this dancing of the Shining One, of which so often he had
spoken?

Whatever my forebodings, Larry evidently had none.

"Great stuff!" he cried, when we had met in the great antechamber now
empty of the dwarfs. "Hope it will be worth seeing--have to be
something damned good, though, to catch me, after what I've seen of
shows at the front," he added.

And remembering, with a little shock of apprehension, that he had no
knowledge of the Dweller beyond my poor description of it--for there
are no words actually to describe what that miracle of interwoven
glory and horror was--I wondered what Larry O'Keefe would say and do
when he did behold it!

Rador began to show impatience.

"Come!" he urged. "There is much to be done--and the time grows
short!"

He led us to a tiny fountain room in whose miniature pool the white
waters were concentrated, pearl-like and opalescent in their circling
rim.

"Bathe!" he commanded; and set the exampl