"a sailor ashore," and can only claim the indulgences proper to
the situation. I laughed, danced, drank, through the night; I drank
deep of a dozen rosy ways to forgetfulness, till my mind was a great
confusion, full of flitting pictures of loveliness, till life itself
was an illusive pantomime, and my will but thistle-down on the folly of
the moment. I drank with those gentle roisterers all through their
starlit night, and if we stopped when morning came it was more from
weariness than virtue. Then the yellow-robed slaves gave us the wine
of recovery--alas! my faithful An was not amongst them--and all through
the day we lay about in sodden happiness.

Towards nightfall I was myself again, not unfortunately with the
headache well earned, but sufficiently remorseful to be in a vein to
make good resolutions for the future.

In this mood I mingled with a happy crowd, all purposeless and cheerful
as usual, but before long began to feel the influence of one of those
drifts, a universal turning in one direction, as seaweed turns when the
tide changes, so characteristic of Martian society. It was dusk, a
lovely soft velvet dusk, but not dark yet, and I said to a yellow-robed
fairy at my side:

"Whither away, comrade? It is not eight bells yet. Surely we are not
going to be put to bed so early as this?"

"No," said that smiling individual, "it is the princess. We are going
to listen to Princess Heru in the palace square. She reads the globe
on the terrace again tonight, to see if omens are propitious for her
marriage. She MUST marry, and you know the ceremony has been
unavoidably postponed so far."

"Unavoidably postponed?" Yes, Heaven wotted I was aware of the fact.
And was Heru going to marry black Hath in such a hurry? And after all
I had done for her? It was scarcely decent, and I tried to rouse
myself to rage over it, but somehow the seductive Martian contentment
with any fate was getting into my veins. I was not yet altogether sunk
in their slothful acceptance of the inevitable, but there was not the
slightest doubt the hot red blood in me was turning to vapid stuff such
as did duty for the article in their veins. I mustered up a
half-hearted frown at this unwelcome intelligence, turning with it on
my face towards the slave girl; but she had slipped away into the
throng, so the frown evaporated, and shrugging my shoulders I said to
myself, "What does it matter? There are twenty others will do as well
fo