eyes were those of
myriads of the people who sat silent, flower-garlanded, their gaze
focused upon the rainbow curtain and sweeping over me like a
torrent--tangible, appalling!

Five hundred feet beyond, the smooth, high retaining wall of the
amphitheatre raised itself--above it the first terrace of the seats,
and above this, dividing the tiers for another half a thousand feet
upward, set within them like a panel, was a dead-black surface in
which shone faintly with a bluish radiance a gigantic disk; above it
and around it a cluster of innumerable smaller ones.

On each side of me, bordering the platform, were scores of small
pillared alcoves, a low wall stretching across their fronts; delicate,
fretted grills shielding them, save where in each lattice an opening
stared--it came to me that they were like those stalls in ancient
Gothic cathedrals wherein for centuries had kneeled paladins and
people of my own race on earth's fair face. And within these alcoves
were gathered, score upon score, the elfin beauties, the dwarfish men
of the fair-haired folk. At my right, a few feet from the opening
through which we had come, a passageway led back between the fretted
stalls. Half-way between us and the massive base of the amphitheatre a
dais rose. Up the platform to it a wide ramp ascended; and on ramp and
dais and along the centre of the gleaming platform down to where it
kissed the white waters, a broad ribbon of the radiant flowers lay
like a fairy carpet.

On one side of this dais, meshed in a silken web that hid no line or
curve of her sweet body, white flesh gleaming through its folds, stood
Yolara; and opposite her, crowned with a circlet of flashing blue
stones, his mighty body stark bare, was Lugur!

O'Keefe drew a long breath; Rador touched my arm and, still dazed, I
let myself be drawn into the aisle and through a corridor that ran
behind the alcoves. At the back of one of these the green dwarf
paused, opened a door, and motioned us within.

Entering, I found that we were exactly opposite where the ramp ran up
to the dais--and that Yolara was not more than fifty feet away. She
glanced at O'Keefe and smiled. Her eyes were ablaze with little
dancing points of light; her body seemed to palpitate, the rounded
delicate muscles beneath the translucent skin to run with joyful
little eager waves!

Larry whistled softly.

"There's Marakinoff!" he said.

I looked where he pointed. Opposite us sat the Russian, clo