“It is perhaps the most romantic tale in history,” she resumed, speaking almost with exaltation, while her eyes took on a far-away dreamy look that I thought most becoming, and her upper lip twitched with the same sympathetic quivering I had noted before. “Atlantis is one of the most ancient republics in the world, and at one time was the most populous and powerful of all countries. Our history goes back more than seven thousand years, four thousand above the sea and three thousand beneath--four thousand years of growth, tumult and conquest, and three thousand years of maturity and peace. At a time when Egypt and Babylonia were still unheard of, our engineers reared monuments more massive than the pyramids; and when Babylonia and Egypt were in the full pride of their renown our people regarded them contemptuously as the merest barbarian tribes. Our accomplishments were to them what theirs were to the unclothed blacks of the south; and our country surpassed theirs as a marble palace surpasses a clay hut.” * * * * * “But what was the precise location of your country? And how large was it?” I interposed. “It was in an isolated position a full day’s sailing west of the Pillars of Hercules. As for its size, it was large, and yet not overwhelmingly so; a swift runner might have traveled around it between full moon and full moon. But today you might took vainly for its plains and snow-tipped mountains, for above all but its highest peaks, the unbroken waters foam and toss.” Aelios paused momentarily, and a melancholy reminiscent light came into her eyes, while her long, lithe fingers toyed absently with the folds of her lavender gown. “Ah, how sad!” I could not forebear murmuring. “What a ghastly tragedy!” “No, not a tragedy,” she quickly denied, regarding me again with a peculiar surprise that I could not understand. “There is no tragedy in the history of Atlantis, though of course there might have been.” “No tragedy?” I cried, wondering vaguely if Aelios could be trying to make sport of me. “Is it not tragedy for a whole great country to be submerged?” “It may be, or again it may not be,” she replied, enigmatically. “In this case, it was not.” Noting my quizzical silence, she continued, with a reassuring smile, “No doubt you will find this difficult to understand. In your world above seas, conditions are perhaps very different from those of old Atlantis. Certainly, you are spared the perils which we faced, and which compelled us to submerge our continent.” “Compelled you to submerge your continent?” I repeated, growing more amazed each instant. “Do you mean to say you submerged it deliberately?” “Yes. How else?” she returned, in matter-of-fact tones. “The Submergence--or the Deliverance, as it is sometimes called--was the most fortunate event in our history. We celebrate it annually at our great festival, the Festival of the Good Destruction.”