uare was thronged with Martians, all facing
towards the porch, as still, graven images, and as voiceless, for once,
as though they had indeed been marble. It was strange to see them
sitting there in the twilight, waiting for I knew not what, and my
friend's voice at my elbow almost startled me as she said, in a
whisper, "The princess knows you are in the crowd, and desires you to
go up upon the steps near where she will be."

"Who brought her message?" I asked, gazing vaguely round, for none had
spoken to us for an hour or more.

"No one," said my companion, gently pushing me up an open way towards
the palace steps left clear by the sitting Martians. "It came direct
from her to me this minute."

"But how?" I persisted.

"Nay," said the girl, "if we stop to talk like this we shall not be
placed before she comes, and thus throw a whole year's knowledge out."

So, bottling my speculations, I allowed myself to be led up the first
flight of worn, white steps to where, on the terrace between them and
the next flight leading directly to the palace portico, was a flat,
having a circle about twenty feet across, inlaid upon the marble with
darker coloured blocks. Inside that circle, as I sat down close by it
in the twilight, showed another circle, and then a final one in whose
inmost middle stood a tall iron tripod and something atop of it covered
by a cloth. And all round the outer circle were magic symbols--I
started as I recognised the meaning of some of them--within these again
the inner circle held what looked like the representations of planets,
ending, as I have said, in that dished hollow made by countless
dancers' feet, and its solitary tripod. Back again, I glanced towards
the square where the great concourse--ten thousand of them,
perhaps--were sitting mute and silent in the deepening shadows, then
back to the magic circles, till the silence and expectancy of a strange
scene began to possess me.

Shadow down below, star-dusted heaven above, and not a figure moving;
when suddenly something like a long-drawn sigh came from the lips of
the expectant multitude, and I was aware every eye had suddenly turned
back to the palace porch, where, as we looked, a figure, wrapped in
pale blue robes, appeared and stood for a minute, then stole down the
steps with an eagerness in every movement holding us spellbound. I
have seen many splendid pageants and many sights, each of which might
be the talk of a lifetime, but some