I touched in turn twenty perplexing tablets and was no whit the wiser,
and felt about the sides yet came to nothing, groping here and there with
a rising despair, until as my fingers, still damp and fine of touch, went
round the sides a second time, yes! there was something, something in the
hollow of the fluting, a thought, a thread, and yet enough. I took it
unseen, lifting it with infinite forbearance, and the end was weighted,
the other tablets slipped and rattled as from their midst, hanging to
that one fine virgin hair, up came a pearly billet. I doubted no longer,
but snapped the thread, and showed the tablet, heard Heru's name, read
from it amongst the soft applause of that luxurious company with all
the unconcern I could muster.

There she was in a moment, lip to lip with me, before them all, her eyes
more than ever like planets from her native skies, and only the quick
heave of her bosom, slowly subsiding like a ground swell after a storm,
remaining to tell that even Martian blood could sometimes beat quicker
than usual! She sat down in her place by me in the simplest way, and soon
everything was as merry as could be. The main meal came on now, and as
far as I could see those Martian gallants had extremely good appetites,
though they drank at first but little, wisely remembering the strength of
their wines. As for me, I ate of fishes that never swam in earthly seas,
and of strange fowl that never flapped a way through thick terrestrial
air, ate and drank as happy as a king, and falling each moment more and
more in love with the wonderfully beautiful girl at my side who was a
real woman of flesh and blood I knew, yet somehow so dainty, so pink and
white, so unlike other girls in the smoothness of her outlines, in the
subtle grace of each unthinking attitude, that again and again I looked
at her over the rim of my tankard half fearing she might dissolve into
nothing, being the half-fairy which she was.