houses, close together, at the water’s edge and spreading back thinly into the hills behind. This they knew to be Arite—the city of their destination.
At the end of the tunnel they left the sleigh, and, turning down the gentle sloping hillside, leisurely approached the city. They were part way across an open field separating them from the nearest houses, when they saw a group of figures coming across the field towards them. This group stopped when still a few hundred yards away, only two of the figures continuing to come forward. They came onward steadily, the tall figure of a man clothed in white, and by his side a slender, graceful boy.
In a moment more Lao, walking in front of the Doctor and his two companions, stopped suddenly and, turning to face them, said quietly, “The Master.”
The three travelers, with their hearts pounding, paused an instant. Then with a shout the Very Young Man dashed forward, followed by his two companions.
“It’s Rogers—it’s Rogers!” he called; and in a moment more the three men were beside the Chemist, shaking his hand and pouring at him excitedly their words of greeting.
The Chemist welcomed them heartily, but with a quiet, curious air of dignity that they did not remember he possessed before. He seemed to have aged considerably since they had last seen him. The lines in his face had deepened; the hair on his temples was white. He seemed also to be rather taller than they remembered him, and certainly he was stouter.
He was dressed in a long, flowing robe of white cloth, gathered in at the waist by a girdle, from which hung a short sword, apparently of gold or of beaten brass. His legs were bare; on his feet he wore a form of sandal with leather thongs crossing his insteps. His hair grew long over his ears and was cut off at the shoulder line in the fashion of the natives.
When the first words of greeting were over, the Chemist turned to the boy, who was standing apart, watching them with big, interested eyes.
“My friends,” he said quietly, yet with a little underlying note of pride in his voice, “this is my son.”
The boy approached deferentially. He was apparently about ten or eleven years of age, tall as his father’s shoulder nearly, extremely slight of build, yet with a body perfectly proportioned. He was dressed in a white robe similar to his father’s, only shorter, ending at his knees. His skin was of a curious, smooth, milky whiteness, lacking the gray, harder look of that of the native men, and with just a touch of the iridescent quality possessed by the women. His features were cast in a delicate mold, pretty enough almost to be called girlish, yet with a firm squareness of chin distinctly masculine.
His eyes were blue; his thick, wavy hair, falling to his shoulders, was a chestnut brown. His demeanor was graceful and dignified, yet with a touch of ingenuousness that marked him for the care-free child he really was. He held out his hands palms up as he approached.
“My name is Loto,” he said in a sweet, soft voice, with perfect self-possession. “I’m glad to meet my father’s friends.” He spoke English with just a trace of the liquid quality that characterized his mother’s tongue.
“You are late getting here,” remarked the Chemist with a smile, as the three travelers, completely surprised by this sudden introduction, gravely shook hands with the boy.
During this time the young Oroid who had guided them down from the forest above the tunnels, had been standing respectfully behind them, a few feet away. A short distance farther on several small groups of natives were gathered, watching the strangers. With a few swift words Loto now dismissed their guide, who bowed low with his hands to his forehead and left them.
Led by the Chemist, they continued on down into the city, talking earnestly, telling him the details of their trip. The natives followed them as they moved forward, and as they entered the city others looked at them curiously and, the Very Young Man thought, with a little hostility, yet always from a respectful distance. Evidently it was night, or at least the time of sleep at this hour, for the streets they passed through were nearly deserted.
CHAPTER 19
THE CITY OF ARITE
The city of Arite, as it looked to them now, was strange beyond anything they had ever seen, but still by no means as extraordinary as they had expected it would be. The streets through which they walked were broad and straight, and were crossed by others at regular intervals of two or three hundred feet. These streets paralleled each other with mathematical regularity. The city thus was laid out most orderly, but with one peculiarity; the streets did not run in two directions crossing each other at right angles, but in three, each inclined to an equal degree with the others. The blocks of houses between them, therefore, were cut into diamond-shaped sections and into triangles, never into squares or oblongs.
Most of the streets seemed paved with large, flat gray blocks of a substance resembling highly polished stone, or a form of opaque glass. There were no sidewalks, but close up before the more pretentious of the houses, were small trees growing.
The houses themselves were generally triangular or diamond-shaped, following the slope of the streets. They were, most of them, but two stories in height, with flat roofs on some of which flowers and trellised vines were growing. They were built principally of the same smooth, gray blocks with which the streets were paved. Their windows were large and numerous, without window-panes, but closed now, nearly all of them by shining, silvery curtains that looked as though they might have been woven from the metal itself. The doors were of heavy metal, suggesting brass or gold. On some of the houses tiny low-railed balconies hung from the upper windows out over the street.
The party proceeded quietly through this now deserted city, crossing a large tree-lined square, or park, that by the confluence of many streets seemed to mark its center, and turned finally into another diagonal street that dropped swiftly down towards the lake front. At the edge of a promontory this street abruptly terminated in a broad flight of steps leading down to a little beach on the lake shore perhaps a hundred feet below.
The Chemist turned sharp to the right at the head of these steps, and, passing through the opened gateway of an arch in a low gray wall, led his friends into a garden in which were growing a profusion of flowers. These flowers, they noticed, were most of them blue or gray, or of a pale silvery whiteness, lending to the scene a peculiarly wan, wistful appearance, yet one of extraordinary, quite unearthly beauty.
Through the garden a little gray-pebbled path wound back to where a house stood, nearly hidden in a grove of trees, upon a bluff directly overlooking the lake.
“My home, gentlemen,” said the Chemist, with a wave of his hand.
As they approached the house they heard, coming from within, the mellow voice of a woman singing—an odd little minor theme, with a quaint, lilting rhythm, and words they could not distinguish. Accompanying the voice were the delicate tones of some stringed instrument suggesting a harp.
“We are expected,” remarked the Chemist with a smile. “Lylda is still up, waiting for us.” The Very Young Man’s heart gave a leap at the mention of the name.
From the outside, the Chemist’s house resembled many of the larger ones they had seen as they came through the city. It was considerably more pretentious than any they had yet noticed, diamond-shaped—that is to say, a flattened oblong—two stories in height and built of large blocks of the gray polished stone.
Unlike the other houses, its sides were not bare, but were partly covered by a luxuriant growth of vines and trellised flowers. There were no balconies under its windows, except on the lake side. There, at the height of the second story, a covered balcony broad enough almost to be called a veranda, stretched the full width of the house.
A broad door of brass, fronting the garden, stood partly open, and the Chemist pushed it wide and ushered in his friends. They found themselves now in a triangular hallway, or lobby, with an open arch in both its other sides giving passage into rooms beyond. Through one of these archways the Chemist led them, into what evidently was the main living-room of the dwelling.
It was a high-ceilinged room nearly triangular in shape, thirty feet possibly at its greatest width. In one wall were set