"Ah, Hupor gives you his favor, granted a few. Remove your cuirass and rest," Naia said resuming her seat and signing the Mazzerian to assist her guest. Then as he slipped out of the metal harness and stood in the soft shirt beneath it, she invited him to a place at her side and directed both servants to withdraw. "You are come for the promised visit?" she began when they sat alone. "If the time fits in with your convenience," Croft replied. * * * * * Naia looked down at her sandalless feet, high arched and pink of nail, "I will be frank," she went on. "I have been piqued because you delayed your coming." She glanced up with a little laugh. "And I that I could not come the sooner," Croft blended his laughter with hers. "You came in your car?" "Yes." "Tell me," she said, and laid a hand on his arm. "My father declares that Jadgor thinks you inspired of Zitu to make Tamarizia great. Tell me, about these moturs and your work." Next to his love, these things were first in Croft's mind. For an hour he talked to the girl at his side. And he talked well. Her presence fired him, loosened his tongue. He painted for her a picture of Aphurian transportation transformed, of motors filling the highways, of motor-driven ships on river and sea, and swept on by his own conceptions spoke of motors as possible things of the air. "Zitu!" she cried. "My lord would dare what none save the birds dare now?" "Even so," said Croft. "So shall Aphur become strong--stronger than any other State of Tamarizia--strong enough to guard the western gate without another's aid." He had made the remark of deliberate purpose, and now he heard the girl beside him catch her breath, and glancing toward her, found her eyes wide and very, very dark, with a strange light in their depths. "You--my Lord Jasor, you can do this thing?" "And will," he declared. He saw Naia of Aphur quiver. "One who did that might ask what he would, and receive it of the State," she said slowly, and then once more her fingers touched his arm and he found them icy cold. "My lord, does Zitu answer prayers?" Croft's mind leaped swiftly from her words to a night when he had seen her kneeling before the figure of Azil in this self-same house--when he had heard her plea, lifted out of an anguished spirit--to the One Eternal Source. "What mean you?" he asked. "If one--in sore trouble--one with a spirit which rebelled at a task to which it was set should cry for aid, would Zitu give heed?"