Since there was manifestly nothing else to do, we obeyed readily enough, and were glad indeed to find ourselves stepping once more through the doorway and out into the street, even though the half dozen strangers had grouped themselves on all sides of us as a sort of bodyguard. We knew, in fact, that we were virtually prisoners, and yet were no longer alarmed, for no imprisonment could be worse than that which we had already suffered. Also we had an intuitive sense that we should not be badly treated; whether out of consideration for our feelings or merely because they were afraid of us, our attendants did not attempt to lay hands on us or to coerce us in any way. Yet when they indicated by gestures the direction in which they desired us to walk, we had no thought of objecting, but obeyed as docilely as though they were our acknowledged masters. For a distance of possibly two or three miles they led us with them through the city streets; and far from brooding over our predicament (which was manifestly serious), we amused ourselves with observing the sights of the town. Dozens of the inhabitants had come out to peer at us as we strode past; and, though they kept at a cautious distance, we could see them clearly enough: their slender, graceful forms and blond features, their amiable blue eyes and rippling, unbound hair, their loose-hanging, light-tinted robes, variously colored from buff and lilac to azure and pale rose, gave them the appearance less of human beings than of walking butterflies or flowers. But even more interesting to us than these humans was the architecture of the town. We were fascinated, first of all, by the very pavement beneath us, which was of baked clay worked into a multihued and picturesque mosaic; we were still more fascinated by the buildings, which on close observation proved to be even more artistically designed than we had imagined, for exquisite little statues abounded in niches between the columns or under the domes and spires, and superb frescoes decorated the ceilings of the numberless colonnades and the outside walls of temples, and curving walks wound gracefully between terraces adorned with a lovely waxen flower or around the brink of the shimmering rainbowed fountains. I particularly noted the width of the avenues, in whose spacious reaches and wide adjoining courts the bright-robed children laughed and played; and I was surprised to observe that the buildings, instead of being jammed together in the modern box-like fashion, were each separated from their neighbors by broad paved ways or wide patches of vegetation, so that the whole gave an uncrowded and leisurely and yet skilfully patterned effect.