al electrical telescopes for direct distant vision, and small
pocket mirrors for that which otherwise would be hidden. A million
people at least, seated here on these gigantic spreading tiers.

The lake itself was thus the stage as it were, of a tremendous arena.
Tiny artificial islands dotted the lake--a hundred of them. Islands,
some no more than a few feet broad; some larger, and in the center of
the lake, one quite large. All the islands were covered with luxuriant
vegetation. The tiny ones were no more than shadowed nooks of leaves and
flowers.

Between the islands, crooked lanes of the placid water wended their way
in and out, broadening into occasional lagoons. Bridges crossed the
lanes; archways of lights spanned them at intervals.

From this distance the whole scene was a riot of color and great red and
purple auroral lights of Venus, which at this midnight hour rode the
upper sky, tinged everything vividly. The archway lights were soft rose,
silver and gold. Some of the tiny islands, from sources hidden were
bathed in bright silver. Others darker, in deep purple and red; still
others, quite unlighted, dim and shadowed, touched only by the reflected
glow from those near them.

From the main island lights were flashing into the sky; occasional color
bombs mounted and burst, painting the heavens.

A riot of color. And then as we approached, I became aware of sound and
movement as well. Music from scores of unseen sources. Music from single
isolated instruments floating softly over the water--lovers playing
accompaniment to their pleading voices; or again, groups of voices--the
curiously mellow voices of young girls--and, on an island apart, music
from an aerial carrying strains from the public _concelan_.[18]

[Footnote 18: Orchestra.]

It was all music of a type unfamiliar to me of Earth. The
intellectuality of our Earth music was missing. This music of Venus was
built upon queer minor strains; unfinished cadences; a rhythm of the
sort we of Earth could never encompass. I listened, and felt the appeal
of my senses. The lavish, abandoned music of barbarism? I had almost
thought it that. Yet it was not. Rather was it decadent. This whole
scene; the color, the music, the heavy cloying scents with which the
night air was redolent; the warm, sensuous abandonment, felt rather than
made obvious--it was not barbarism, but decadence. And I realized then
how close are the two extremes. A reversion to type, merely.