Nature seemed to have left her task uncompleted so far as Jasor was concerned. That was his name--Jasor, from Nodhur, the state to the south of Aphur as Croft learned by degrees. He was a lovable young man, mild-mannered, friendly and kind. But he was rated in his studies with youths two years his juniors and appeared unable to do more than maintain his standing with them. Watching him, Croft felt both pity and interest develop through the course of the seven days wherein he himself acquired so great an understanding of Palosian life. It seemed a pity to Croft that one so splendidly endowed with physical perfection should be so mentally weak. He rather followed young Jasor about and discovered to his pleasure that although seemingly well provided with means the youth was naturally of a cleanly life. More than that, through association with him, he came to know that Jasor felt his position acutely, and was brooding over his own mental capacity to an unwise degree. * * * * * Throughout his stay in Cathur, however, Croft did not lose sight of his main object in coming to the northern state. He had come to find and judge Kyphallos for himself, and he attended to that, not the first night, as he had intended, but the next night after that. There was a reason for the delay. Kyphallos was not in Scira when Croft came to the capital of Cathur. Jason managed to see Scythys the king. He found him in a splendid room clad in a loose robe of scarlet, a senile husk of a once massive man, with a look of vague trouble in his half-blinded cataract-filmed eyes. But of Kyphallos the son there was no sign. Only by chance remarks was Croft able to learn the whereabouts of the prince. By such means he finally learned of a second palace maintained on an island in the Central Sea, off the coast of Cathur, not far from the border of the former Tamarizian state of Mazhur. The island was known as Anthra, was a part of the state of Cathur, and a favorite retreat with the crown prince. To Anthra on the second night Croft went. And on Anthra he plunged into such a scene as he had not met in Tamarizia as yet. Heretofore he had been struck with the mild beauty of Palosian life, with a sort of personal dignity which seemed to pervade the nation, despite the magnificence of their public structures and the undoubted wealth of the state. Not but what, being human, there was a percentage of criminality in the social life. Such things, as among other races, were known and recognized, but he had found it here regulated to a surprising extent. On Anthra, he came into an atmosphere the antithesis of this, combined with a degree of voluptuous luxury, cradled in a setting of utter magnificence. He came upon a saturnalia of pleasure. He could liken it to nothing else. A feast was in progress in the palace Kyphallos had made the scene of his private debauches for years.