ircle--_you drop to the floor_!
You understand? Keep down, or the rays might strike you! But be here,
inside, and watch. And _afterward_, go quickly to join the Princess and
your Elza. You understand?"

She clung to me, with her slim, white body pressed against my cloak. To
anyone watching us, she would have seemed merely making love. Her eyes
were provocative; her lips mocking me. But she was whispering, _"Drop to
the floor when Tarrano dances with the Red Woman--drop or the rays might
strike you!"_

Another girl was plucking at me from behind. Alda shouted: "You shall
not have him!" and cast me off. But I heard her whisper, _"Come outside
for a moment--then come back!"_--and then, aloud, she cried to the other
girl, "You shall not have him! He is coming to watch me dive and swim! I
am more beautiful than you--you could not win him from me!"

I let them drag me out into the grove by the scented pool.

CHAPTER XXII

_Revolution!_

I realize that I am, by nature, not overly observant; and in those
moments, when I stood out there beside the pool, I think I came most
forcibly to appreciate how little I habitually observe that which is not
readily apparent. An incident now occurred to bring it home to me; and,
quite suddenly, a score of things which I had seen during the past two
hours at the festival were made plain.

Music, feasting, merry-making, love! In the midst of it all, an
undercurrent of events was flowing. Unseen events--but I had partly seen
some of them, and now, at last, I began to understand.

In the main hall of the pavilion, midway to its roof, a line of mirrors
was placed along the wall facing Tarrano. A hundred small mirrors, side
by side. On them were moving images of what was taking place in
different parts of the festival--so that Tarrano and the others might
see the merry-making, not only in the pavilion, but elsewhere, as well.
It was interesting to watch the mirrors--and sometimes amusing. The
scene of a gay battle of boats in a nearby lagoon; the diving girls in
the pools; a view from the sky above of the whole scene; another,
looking upward at the color bombs bursting overhead; a bridge on which a
dozen girls were besieged by as many men, who sought to climb upward
from their boats underneath, flowers for missiles, and the alcholite
fumes which held off the attackers, or, perchance, caused a girl to fall
into the water, to be instantly captured.

Other mirrors, eavesdropping upo