ater stays, the better for
us; it never varies from white. But we must not talk; see! she is
stopping."

And as I looked back, the dance was certainly ebbing now with such
smoothly decreasing undulations, that every heart began to beat calmer
in response. There was a minute or two of such slow cessation, and
then to say she stopped were too gross a description. Motion rather
died away from her, and the priestess grounded as smoothly as a ship
grounds in fine weather on a sandy bank. There she was at last,
crouched behind the tripod, one corner of the cloth covering it grasped
in her hand, and her eyes fixed on the shining round just poised upon
the distant run.

Keenly the girl watched it slide into zenith, then the cloth was
snatched from the tripod-top. As it fell it uncovered a beautiful and
perfect globe of clear white glass, a foot or so in diameter, and
obviously filled with the thinnest, most limpid water imaginable. At
first it seemed to me, who stood near to the priestess of Mars, with
that beaming sphere directly between us, and the newly risen world,
that its smooth and flawless face was absolutely devoid of sign or
colouring. Then, as the distant planet became stronger in the
magnifying Martian air, or my eyes better accustomed to that sudden
nucleus of brilliancy, a delicate and infinitely lovely network of
colours came upon it. They were like the radiant prisms that sometimes
flush the surface of a bubble more than aught else for a time. But as
I watched that mosaic of yellow and purple creep softly to and fro upon
the globe it seemed they slowly took form and meaning. Another minute
or two and they had certainly congealed into a settled plan, and then,
as I stared and wondered, it burst upon me in a minute that I was
looking upon a picture, faithful in every detail, of the world I stood
on; all its ruddy forests, its sapphire sea, both broad and narrow
ones, its white peaked mountains, and unnumbered islands being mapped
out with startling clearness for a spell upon that beaming orb.

Then a strange thing happened. Heru, who had been crouching in a
tremulous heap by the tripod, rose stealthily and passed her hands a
few times across the sphere. Colour and picture vanished at her touch
like breath from a mirror. Again all was clear and pellucid.

"Now," said my companion, "now listen! For Heru reads the destiny; the
whiter the globe stays the better for us--" and then I felt her hand
tigh