"As the morning dawned, the shower discontinued, a few laggards fell in scattering confusion over the prostrate city, and the sun climbing the eastern sky sent its peaceful reassuring light upon a cairn-like heap of desolation. The chilled surface of the fallen meteorites were broken up by areas of glowing cinder-like surfaces. The glittering and opaline city of glass, the City of Scandor, capital of the Martian world, was buried beneath the scorching and stony fragments of a minor comet, or some diminished and wandering meteor train which suddenly issuing from the unknown depths of space had descended with mathematical precision upon the treasure city of the planet. "The Martian legions remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent. The awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their spirit, and they looked into each other's faces with bewilderment. "I had stayed with Alca throughout the night, and I now turning to him said: "'Let us go! What can we do here? Let us walk away for awhile. I am dizzy with terror.' "'Yes,' he answered, and tears seemed filling his eyes, 'we will go. We will walk out into the hill and river country beyond the canal. Many are wandering over the country now. The farmers will harbor us and the beauty of the lanes will bring us cheerfulness.' "And so we went away, hastening with the Martian velocity of motion until as the sun hung in the zenith, we had reached a hillside sloping upon a meadow space through which passed the clear but sluggish waters of a wide stream. A tulip-like grass was distributed in the heavy luxuriant growth of the meadow, which bore upon pendant threads a blue bell-like flower. A gentle wind, rising and falling, swept over them, lifting and blowing out the cups as it passed off to the surface of the water and printed it with plashes of ripples. A piece of wood pushed out from the hillside, the trees that formed it struggling out into the meadow in a broken succession of individuals like a line of men. Here, leaning against the last tree trunk that stood quite alone in advance of its companions, was a young woman, her arms folded above the cap--like the Grecian cassos--that imperfectly held her hair, and dressed in a yellow tunic and the half seen leggings of meshed chalcal thread--a lovely picture of meditation. "I caught Alca's arm in a sudden wave of desire and excitement. It was the impulse of love, the first burning of its sacred fire I had known in Mars, and it was the intense certainty of recognition that made it so impetuous. My Son, your Mother was before me!