For that Rondah whom he had known stood no more before him. This gold-draped woman had beauty more fair than Earth gave, had wondrous eyes, glowing like stars. In her perfect face there was the chiseled beauty of an angel’s dream, not an earthly dream. But still, like Regan, he knew it was Rondah, the same Rondah. The lengthy marriage rite was first—stately, religious, slow. Even with its words Rondah kept thinking: “Am I here, or do I dream to waken to the old, lonely misery?” With the benediction there swooped down her subjects by thousands to kiss her robe or her hand, or to caress her gold-red hair with one soft touch. How kindly clear rang out their song of words, “Our queen! the Earth-woman, Rondah!” “I could never dream all this,” the queen was thinking to herself, “I could never dream all this! I don’t know enough!” There was a feast—flowers, fruit, shade and multitudes. Then there was the short hour’s rest between noon and sunset. At sunset were to begin the magnificent entertainments which the bird people had arranged in accordance with Father Renaudin’s design. To a most lovely day was added the magnificence of a most perfect star sunset, of itself a wonder to the woman of Earth, the sea sweeping a phosphorescent sheet of reflection and the land bathed in brilliance which was blinding. The Earth moon rose and the bird people flew in hosts into the sky; there they flashed lamps and swung streamers of gorgeous colors, forming into groups of circles stars, lines and crescents, to make moving, brilliant gems in the sky. Last of all they swept in one mass, chaos of light and color, for a single moment. Then clear, motionless save for the slight shimmer of the many wings, in the sky was one mighty crown of flame. They flew down on the shores of an artificial lake of large dimensions, where they lighted lamps of various colors. Upon an island in this lake they stood in statuesque groups, until from water to the white temple built on the summit it was a wall of beauty. One ethereal bird woman just touched the spire of the temple with her foot; her white veiling robes made her like a goddess. She held in each hand a lamp, and she shook from the same hands two great, misty flags of softest golden web. In a second’s time the same flags, like fiery sheen, flew from every hand upon the rock, a pyramid of golden glory and gorgeous light. Then the lamps were replaced by crescents and stars of colored light, until there was nothing to be seen of the bird people; like a scintillating jewel the rock glowed. A cloud of whiteness, they swept into the distant forest as a flame, bursting from the lower part of the isle, wrapped the whole in fire from water to temple top, a great torch from which the glow fell upon the white stone and glass-paneled palace which Regan had built for Rondah’s home—Rondah’s home like the remembered homes of Earth.