(Knowing barely the name of these Myonessae, unwilling to ask more lest she somehow tip over the razor-narrow bridge of safety) Lalette only smiled and turned to the door. A plank-way led to the dock; the sun shone yellowly upon a row of wharfside houses, whose brick looked as though streaked with wet, while at many windows there was bunting as though for a festival, but much of it faded, miscolored or torn. As she watched, she brushed against a hand which had been held out to her and was beginning to fall in disappointment. Captain Mülvedo. “I am sorry,” she said, and took the hand. “Farewell, demoiselle. I do not believe it. If you are not accepted here, I—that is—” He seemed at the edge of tears, a droll thing. “Thank you. I will remember your kindness.” Brog was in the rear, looking right past her (and she had the dreadful feeling that when she was gone, he would have no trouble in bringing the Captain to his own point of view on her. This was goodbye to all yesterdays.). She mounted the plank for the shore. There was a great press of people about, the men in loose pantaloons hanging over their shoes, and all walking about and yammering as fast as they could. They seemed reasonlessly excited, as though this were a day of crisis; Lalette could hardly make out a sign of that calm assurance that seemed to be the mark of the Amorosians in her own country. They stared at Lalette, the more when two of the guards who waited at the plank with short bills in their hands and the small “city” arbalests strapped to their backs, placed themselves on either side of her at a word from the dunnier, leading across to a building with a low door, over which was a shield painted thickly with something that might be a pair of clasped hands on a field of blue. There was a door down the hallway rightward, with a little man at a desk behind it, writing laboriously, his tongue in his cheek, as the light struck over his shoulder. The guards led Lalette in; he jumped up and threw down his quill so rapidly that a blot was left on the paper. She noticed food-stains on his jacket. “You must not interrupt, really you must not interrupt me unannounced,” he said. “You are not authorized. I am a protostylarion.” His big pop-eyes with blue white seemed to swell as they fell on Lalette; one of the guards laid a paper before him saying; “A candidate for the Myonessae, on the incoming ship from Dossola. Orders of the dunnier.” “Ah, ah.” The protostylarion was no taller than she herself as he came fussing importantly around the desk to move a chair two fingerlengths for her convenience, then diddled back to his place. The paper made him frown. “Ah, ah, suspicion of the Art. This does not happen often these days, but you are very fortunate to be here, demoiselle, instead of in Dossola. Ah—you have read the First Book of our great leader and Prophet? Answer me now, the misfortune of the loss of patrimony, why do you think that came upon him?”