n the secluded islands, making public,
for the amusement of the spectators in the pavilion, the furtive
love-making of couples who fancied themselves alone.

All this I had seen. And now I remembered that, occasionally, a mirror
had gone dark, and then turned suddenly to a scene somewhere else. I
understood now. Quiet incidents against Tarrano were in progress. The
mirrors were being tampered with, that none of these events should be
shown.

There were, scattered throughout the festival, fully a hundred men of
Tarrano's guard. Some of them I knew by their uniforms; others were
concealed by red masks and robes like myself. When first we entered the
pavilion, some twenty or thirty of them had been there with us. But many
of them did not stay; and now I remembered that, one by one, I had seen
them slip away, lured by the slim, white shapes of girls who came from
the pool to beguile them.

I realized now that these girls of the scented pool were very possibly
all working for Maida. Most daring of all at the festival, these fifty
girls who now disported themselves in the water at my feet. All
beautiful, none beyond the first flush of earliest maturity. Slight,
grey-white nymphs, laughing as they discarded their hampering veils,
tossing their white hair as they plunged into the shimmering pool.
Seemingly the most seductive, most abandoned of everyone.

Yet, as I stood there, I saw three of them climb from the water and,
with gay shouts, rush into the pavilion. Back in a moment; and with them
a flushed man--one of Tarrano's guards--flushed and flattered at their
attention. His hat was gone, his robe disheveled, as the girls fought
for him. They stopped quite close to me; and I saw that one of them was
Alda.

"You shall not have him!" she shouted to her companions. "He is mine! He
loves me--none of you!"

From her thick hair I saw her draw a tiny cylinder, wave it in the man's
face. And, with another laugh, she flung her arms around his neck and
fell with him into the water. I watched the splash and the ripples where
they went down. In a moment, the girl came up--_but the man did not_. In
all the confusion of the crowded pool, it was not very obvious.

A dozen, perhaps, of such incidents, which now, that I was alert to
understand, were apparent. The mirrors might have shown some of
them--but the mirrors always went dark just in time.

Tarrano's guards were disappearing. And now I saw a _slaan_ skulking in
the shadows