I had (yes, I confess it) flattered myself that I would thus be instrumental in bringing about a great reform, in righting a cruel injustice. Vain vision, vain alluring dream! As I went on with my panegyric, I saw wonder and amazement gathering in the beautiful eyes of Lathendra Lepraylya. When I had finished, she sat for some moments like one dumfounded. And, when at last she spoke, it was, as old Rabelais has it, as though her tongue was walking on crutches. What she said was: "My Lord, Bill Carter!" And again after a pause: "My Lord, Bill Carter!" At this point I noticed that Milton was smiling at me with great apparent amusement. "But, then," Lepraylya added, "it must be an allegory. I confess, however, that the meaning, to my poor intellect at any rate, is involved in the deepest obscurity. Yes, an allegory it must be. Surely this world that you have described to me exists only in the imagination; surely it is an imaginary world inhabited by imaginary sane people that are in reality lunatics!" But this _is_ anticipating. There we stood before Lathendra Lepraylya, the Queen of Drome. And what a vision of loveliness was that upon which we stood gazing! Strange, too, was the beauty of Lathendra Lepraylya, what with her violet hair. Yes, I wrote violet, and I mean violet. (Her age I put at about thirty.) The eyes were large and lustrous, were of the lightest gray, the pallid color of them and the violet of her tresses enhancing the weird loveliness of her. With her right hand she held the scepter; one end of it rested upon the dais, upon the other was a statuette--of Zeeleenoanthelda, the half-historical, half-mythical first sovereign of Drome. Upon Lepraylya's brow, in a bejeweled golden diadem, was a large brilliance of pale green, flashing when she moved her head with prismatic hues and fires. But this woman before whom we stood was no mere beauty. That one saw at the first glance. Wonderful, splendid, one felt, was the mind of her, the soul of Lathendra Lepraylya. And not only that, but it was as though there was something uncanny in those pale gray eyes when she turned them to mine. That look of Lepraylya's did not meet look; it seemed to go right into my very brain, to search out its thoughts and its secret places. At the time it seemed long, but I suppose that no more than a few seconds passed before she turned her eyes to Milton Rhodes, upon whom they seemed to linger. And what were the thoughts of the queen as she saw before her two men from another world? We could, of course, only guess. And here again had superstition and a prophet loaded those dice upon a throw of which the fate of Milton Rhodes and myself depended; for one of the prophets had foretold the coming of men from another world--men who would be the harbingers of fearful calamities for Drome.