, and somehow the sight steadied him.

"Ah well," he assured himself, "I'll look them up in a thousand
years or so, and we'll dine together, and then we'll say: 'Don't you
remember how I didn't know?'"

Immediately there presented himself to them a little man who proved
to be Balator, lord-chief-commander of the Royal Golden Guard, and
now especially directed by the prince, he pleasantly told them, to
be responsible for their entertainment and comfort during the
ceremony to follow. They were, in fact, his guests for the evening,
but St. George and Amory were uncertain whether, considering his
office, this was a high honour or a kind of exalted durance.
However, as the man was charming the doubt was not important. He had
an attenuated face, so conveniently brown by race as to suggest the
most soldierly exposure, and he had great, peaceable, slow-lidded
eyes. He was, they subsequently learned, an authority upon insect
life in Yaque, for he had never had the smallest opportunity to go
to war.

As Balator led his guests to their seats near the throne every one
looked on them, as they passed, with the serenest fellowship, and no
regard persisted longer than a glance, friendly and fugitive.
Balator himself not only refrained from stoning the barbarians with
commonplaces, but he did not so much as mention America to them or
treat them otherwise than as companions, as if his was not only the
cosmopolitanism that knows no municipal or continental aliens of its
own class, but a kind of inter-dimensional cosmopolitanism as well.

"Which," said Amory afterward, "was enviable. The next man from
Trebizond or Saturn or Fez whom I meet I'm going to greet and treat
as if he lived the proverbial 'twenty minutes out.'"

A great clock boomed and throbbed through the palace, striking an
hour that was no more intelligible than the jargon of a ship's clock
to a landsman. Somewhere an orchestra thrilled into haunting sound,
poignant with disclosures barely missed. Overhead, through the
mighty rafters of the conical roof, the moon looked down.

"That'll be the same old moon," said Amory. "By Jove! Won't it?"

"It will, please Heaven," said St. George restlessly; "I don't know.
Will it?"

Near the throne was seated a company of dignitaries who wore upon
their breasts great stars and were soberly dressed in a kind of
scholar's gown. Some whispered together and nodded and looked as
solemn as tithing men; and others were feverishly restle