The feasters, I saw, were engaged in drinking from transparent goblets which held brightly colored liquids. I could see no solid food of any kind on the tables, but there were many urns and flagons and amphoræ filled with the bright fluids. Long lines of the white-robed, stiffly marching slaves passed and repassed behind the couches of the feasters, with metal trays holding other glass and metal vessels, which they placed on the tables. Two other things I noted before my brief survey of the place was interrupted. One was that among the laughing, shouting people at the tables there was not one face that would not be called beautiful. All seemed youthful, with the beauty of youth, and its high spirits, yet an impression of evil came to me as I watched them. I sensed, beneath their jesting and laughing, a cold, indolent _heartlessness_. The other thing I noted was the source of the crystalline music. Across the room from me, in an alcove, were the musicians, slaves who operated an intricate instrument which allowed water to fall on thin plates of metal, in single drops or streamlets, producing a tumultuous chiming like a storm of silver bells, wild and clear and sweet, and for all its tempestuousness, oddly harmonious. My companions had been surveying the scene, like myself, but it was evident from the expressions on their faces that it was not new to them. I wondered for what purpose we had been brought there, and remembering the Englishman's interrupted explanation, turned to speak to him. But as I did so, came another interruption, and with it my answer. One of the men at the tables rose and uttered a brief order, and at once a great black slave strode across the room, seized a mace of metal, and with it struck a tremendous blow on a hanging brazen gong. At once the chatter and song at the tables stopped, and all eyes were turned toward ourselves. I felt their gaze sweeping over us, and involuntarily shuddered. Then, beside us, the captain of the guards barked out an order, that sounded across the silence like a whiplash. And at once two of the men who stood beside me strode out to the center of the room, to the wide, clear floor there, and stood facing each other. There was a rippling whisper through the spectators at the tables, a murmur of pleasurable excitement. Without heeding it, the two men at the room's center inspected each other with fierce eyes.