"She stood beside a tree at a distance while we re-entered the vehicle and brought it down to a size normal to her; and came out of it to confront her." Martt burst out: "I tell you that was when I realized how beautiful she is. Say, you never saw a girl like her--you can't describe it----" "I'm not trying," said Brett with his gentle smile. "She met us--there by the vehicle--to us then, Frannie, she was about your size--perhaps a little smaller. She took our hands, laid them against her forehead as though with a gesture of welcome. And led us presently to her home--the house near by. Her father (her mother is dead) her father is a musician. Noted--very high of rank and standing among his people. A kindly old man, with gray and black hair worn long to the base of his neck. We--Martt and I--didn't let ours grow, though as you see we took their mode of dress." "How long were you there?" I asked. "We slept perhaps three hundred times," he answered. "There are no days and nights--always that same half-luminous twilight. No change of seasons--or very little. It is nature in her softest mood. Nothing to struggle against--life made easy. Too easy. . . It was not we who learned Leela's language, but she, like an unnatural precocious child, who learned ours. . . We created a commotion among the people; the ruler sent for us. . . Oh, I have so much I'd like to tell you. But Martt can tell it--after----" He checked himself suddenly. His words, some vague hint of what he almost had added, sent an ominous chill to my heart; and I saw, too, that Dr. Gryce had felt it, for a cloud came to his face and in his eyes I saw fear lurking. But Brett went on at once: "I'd like to tell you of these people. A race at peace with nature and themselves. The struggle for existence all in the past. Decadence. The down-hill grade. Only by struggle can Man progress, Father. This race, with the peak of its civilization thousands of generations in its Past, gently resting, with the inevitable decadence drawing it inexorably back to the barbarism from whence it sprung. I'd like to tell you of their customs, their government--their mode of life. . . Some other time--or Martt will tell you. . . It was all so beautiful--so romantic. . . Music--their strange, beautiful arts--Music as Leela's father gave it--Art to take the place of Science and Industry. . . You ask Martt to tell you about the dancing--the pageants, if you want to call them that, to which we went so many times with Leela. . . But just now I'm tired--I think I've talked too much--and I'm worried--and it seems to press me, against all the logic of our Science, that I have no time to spend, telling all this to you. . ."