s,
mocking, waiting for me to answer.

"I have been long on the way," I answered, in much the same tone, as
though we were speaking of some one not present.

"The way to death is sometimes long, and sometimes short. And, too,
there are things worse than death. But what was it you came here
seeking?"

"I did not know, until just now," I answered, still looking at her eyes,
which glanced at me, then away, then back again. She was interested in
spite of her apparent weariness with routine--or perhaps with life
itself.

"Now that you know, will you tell me?" She smiled a little, not a good
smile, but a secret jest with herself. An appearance of extreme evil sat
for a moment on her face, then went again, like the wind. Her voice was
grave, careless, yet modulated with an extreme care as if she spoke to a
child.

"I seek the wisdom I see in your eyes, to know what is and why it
wearies you. I want to know a great many things, about your people and
what they do here, what they mean to mine, what your plans may be--a
great many things I need now."

The sleepiness left her eyes, and she bent toward me with the grace of a
great cat and the shadows circling her eyes lifted a little. Wise,
aloof, indifferent, yet she did not know what I was, or what I meant,
and she meant to find out.

"So you know...." she mused, as if to herself.

"I know you are from space. I know it has been a long long time since
you first touched here; your people, that is. I know that you drove the
Zervs from this city and took it for your own. But that is all."

"It is too much. You cannot leave here." Her voice was sharp, and I was
surprised to learn that she had even considered letting me go free. It
was encouraging, after the dire pictures the Zervs and Nokomee had drawn
for me of these Schrees.

I looked curiously at them, the Zervs had called them "not human." They
_were_ different, as a negro is different from a white, or an Oriental
from a Finn. Their eyes were wide-set and a little prominent, their ears
thinner and smaller, their necks very long and supple--different still
from the Zervs. Yet they were a human race. I had misunderstood--or I
had not yet met those whom the Zervs called Schree.

Carna had knelt beside me, and I murmured to her:

"Are these the Schrees, or something else?"

"These are the high-class Schrees, they are very like the Zervs in
appearance. The other classes of the Schrees at sometime in the past
were cha