table similarly arranged and ornamented; and entering into the spirit
of the thing, and little guessing how stern a reality was to come from
the evening, I sat down in a vacant place near to the dais, and only a
few paces from where the pale, ghost-eyed Hath was already seated.

Almost immediately afterwards music began to buzz all about the
hall--music of the kind the people loved which always seemed to me
as though it were exuding from the tables and benches, so disembodied
and difficult it was to locate; all the sleepy gallants raised their
flower-encircled heads at the same time, seizing their wine-cups, already
filled to the brim, and the door at the bottom of the hall opening,
the ladies, preceded by one carrying a mysterious vase covered with a
glittering cloth, came in.

Now, being somewhat thirsty, I had already drunk half the wine in my
beaker, and whether it was that draught, drugged as all Martian wines are,
or the sheer loveliness of the maids themselves, I cannot say, but as the
procession entered, and, dividing, circled round under the colonnades of
the hall, a sensation of extraordinary felicity came over me--an emotion
of divine contentment purged of all grossness--and I stared and stared
at the circling loveliness, gossamer-clad, flower-girdled, tripping by
me with vapid delight. Either the wine was budding in my head, or there
was little to choose from amongst them, for had any of those ladies sat
down in the vacant place beside me, I should certainly have accepted her
as a gift from heaven, without question or cavil. But one after another
they slipped by, modestly taking their places in the shadows until at
last came Princess Heru, and at the sight of her my soul was stirred.

She came undulating over the white marble, the loveliness of her fairy
person dimmed but scarcely hidden by a robe of softest lawn in colour