om walled with books, and sunk
into an Egypt of silence; an acreage of covered billiard-tables through
a vast door to the right--a composite of such impressions made the
moment memorable. Bedient could only think of a king's winter
palace--in summer.... He left the servant to return a moment to the
desk.

"Have you a list of the men-guests?" he asked.

The pale one looked disturbed; or possibly it was disappointment that
his colorless features expressed, as if such affairs were for the
lesser servants of the establishment, and not in the province of
gentlemanly dealings.

"No, we have no such list," he said. "Later in the day, when it is
cooler, however, most of our guests are abroad, and you will doubtless
have little difficulty in finding him whom you seek. You will become
familiar in a few hours with our little peculiarities of management.
There is little to complain of in the way of service, I believe----"

Rejoining the Chinese, Bedient was led to an apartment, the elegance of
detail and effect of which was imperial, no less. With relief he
stepped out of his riding clothes, bathed in a deliciously tempered
shower, and sat down to think. The chair folded about him like a cool
soft arm. The whole atmosphere was to him embarrassingly sensuous. The
city was below, shadowed in the swift-falling night; the harbor lay in
purple silence, the sun had sunk in a blood-orange sky.

A smile came to his lips at the heavy seriousness of life all about
him; vice clinging tenaciously to world-forms, and leaning upon the
purchasable beauty of marble and figured walls, its hollowness
sustained with the perfections of service. Then he looked across the
dark harbor to the sweep of deep red which alone remained of the
sunset, thinking of Beth and the dividing sea and the dividing world,
and why it had happened so. He was ashamed because he could not think
of the great work he had dreamed of doing for women, because Beth meant
_Women_ to him now, and he was not for her.... Would the visions of
service ever come back?

This brought his mind to the thing he had come to _The Pleiad_ to do,
and the revolution all around it, in the very air. What a queer
post--in the very fortress of insurrection. It was all boyish stuff.
Many adventures might accrue. Would they be enough to keep his mind
from realities?... He feared not. For an hour he sat there, regarding
the lights of the city and harbor, until his thoughts grew too heavy,
and the