"Who brought her message?" I asked, gazing vaguely round, for none had
spoken to us for an hour or more.

"No one," said my companion, gently pushing me up an open way towards
the palace steps left clear by the sitting Martians. "It came direct
from her to me this minute."

"But how?" I persisted.

"Nay," said the girl, "if we stop to talk like this we shall not be
placed before she comes, and thus throw a whole year's knowledge out."

So, bottling my speculations, I allowed myself to be led up the first
flight of worn, white steps to where, on the terrace between them and
the next flight leading directly to the palace portico, was a flat,
having a circle about twenty feet across, inlaid upon the marble with
darker coloured blocks. Inside that circle, as I sat down close by it
in the twilight, showed another circle, and then a final one in whose
inmost middle stood a tall iron tripod and something atop of it covered by
a cloth. And all round the outer circle were magic symbols--I started as
I recognised the meaning of some of them--within these again the inner
circle held what looked like the representations of planets, ending,
as I have said, in that dished hollow made by countless dancers' feet,
and its solitary tripod. Back again, I glanced towards the square where
the great concourse--ten thousand of them, perhaps--were sitting mute
and silent in the deepening shadows, then back to the magic circles,
till the silence and expectancy of a strange scene began to possess me.

Shadow down below, star-dusted heaven above, and not a figure moving;
when suddenly something like a long-drawn sigh came from the lips of