"It's true I wasn't very logical in my considerations the first time I heard the language," he replied, and Naia of Aphur dropped her eyes. The inner fires of her spirit seemed to quicken. I think she would have blushed had she been in the flesh instead of sitting there with us like an inexpressibly lovely wraith. So at least in those months I acquired a fair understanding of their speech, and I came more and more to regard their home in the western mountains of Aphur, across the desert from Himyra, on Palos, with the same intimacy of feeling I might have experienced for the home of two friends of earth. My conversations with Jason came more and more to resemble consultations on modern affairs. He asked me constantly concerning this and that fresh progress in mundane matters. He discussed with me his plans for improving material and social conditions on Palos. He had already established a series of public schools for the masses where, before his arrival, education of a sort had been provided only for the nobles and men of wealth. Plainly the man was planning to do more where he had already done so much. He had given them moturs--as they called them--airplanes, electricity, printing, telephones of short radius at least, weapons by which Zollaria's schemes had been overthrown. And now he planned to lead them toward higher standards of national and commercial and individual life. And but for what occurred there is no telling what, working together as we were at the time, we might have accomplished. Indeed Croft had established both wireless and telegraphic communication between Zitra and Himyra, and was planning railways on which he intended to run motur-driven trains--was dreaming of a great beltline about the Central Sea, with lateral branches to reach every part of the nation. And then--one night he called me to him as he had called me the night of Jason's birth--and I found him in the self-same chamber, with the purple draperies half torn down and trampled--the fair form of Azil drowned in the mirror pool, beside which the dead body of Mitlos the Mazzerian majordomo lay sprawled. CHAPTER III NAIA OF APHUR Violence, conflict. The marks of the thing were on every side. The ghastly gash in the breast of Mitlos bore dumb testimony to the fact that the man had battled grimly till he died. I gazed into Jason's face, even in its astral semblance haggard. "Croft," I stammered, "what in Zitu's name has happened?" He jerked out an arm in an all-embracing gesture. "Gone, Murray," he told me with a vibration of agony in his answer; "both of them--both Naia and the--child." "Gone?" For a moment my senses seemed whirring. "Croft--what do you mean? Gone--where?"