how gladly I would exchange these poor puppets and the mockery of a town
they dwelt in, for a sight of my comrades and a corner in the poorest
wine-shop salon in New York or 'Frisco; idly speculating why, and how,
I came here, as I sauntered down amongst the glistening, shell-like
fragments of the shattered globe, and finding no answer. How could I?
It was too fair, I thought, standing there in the open; there was a fatal
sweetness in the air, a deadly sufficiency in the beauty of everything
around falling on the lax senses like some sleepy draught of pleasure.
Not a leaf stirred, the wide purple roof of the sky was unbroken by
the healthy promise of a cloud from rim to rim, the splendid country,
teeming with its spring-time richness, lay in rank perfection everywhere;
and just as rank and sleek and passionless were those who owned it.

Why, even I, who yesterday was strong, began to come under the spell
of it. But yesterday the spirit of the old world was still strong
within me, yet how much things were now changing. The well-strung
muscles loosening, the heart beating a slower measure, the busy mind
drowsing off to listlessness. Was I, too, destined to become like these?
Was the red stuff in my veins to be watered down to pallid Martian sap?
Was ambition and hope to desert me, and idleness itself become laborious,
while life ran to seed in gilded uselessness? Little did I guess how
unnecessary my fears were, or of the incredible fairy tale of adventure
into which fate was going to plunge me.

Still engrossed the next morning by these thoughts, I decided I would
go to Hath. Hath was a man--at least they said so--he might sympathise
even though he could not help, and so, dressing finished, I went down
towards the innermost palace whence for an hour or two had come sounds
of unwonted bustle. Asking for the way occasionally from sleepy folk
lolling about the corridors, waiting as it seemed for their breakfasts