At that moment a man appeared in the doorway, the majesty of whose presence I certainly felt before my eyes fell upon him. Or it might have been the reflection I saw in the countenances of my two companions,--I stood with my back to the door, facing them,--which gave me the curious, awe-touched sensation. I turned round, and Clytia immediately started forward. Ariadne exclaimed in an undertone, with an accent of peculiar sweetness,--a commingling of delight, and reverence, and caressing tenderness: "Ah! the Master!" Clytia took him by the hand and brought him to me, where I stood rooted to my place. "Father, this is our friend," she said simply, without further ceremony of introduction. It was enough. He had come on purpose to see me, and therefore he knew who I was. As for him--one does not explain a king! The title by which Ariadne had called him did not at the moment raise an inquiry in my mind. I accepted it as the natural definition of the man. He was a man of kingly proportions, with eyes from which Clytia's had borrowed their limpid blackness. His glance had a wide compresiveness, and a swift, sure, loving insight. He struck me as a man used to moving among multitudes, with his head above all, but his heart embracing all. You may think it strange, but I was not abashed. Perfect love casteth out fear; and there was in this divine countenance--I may well call it divine!--the lambent light of a love so kindly and so tender, that fear, pride, vanity, egotism, even false modesty--our pet hypocrisy--surrendered without a protest. I think I talked more than any one else, being delicately prompted to furnish some account of the world to which I belong, and stimulated by the profound interest with which the Master attended to every word that I said. But I received an equal amount of information myself,--usually in response to the questions with which I rounded up my periods, like this: We do so, and so, upon the Earth; how is it here? The replies threw an extraordinary light upon the social order and conditions there. I naturally dwelt upon the salient characteristics of our people,--I mean, of course, the American people. I spoke of our enormous grasp of the commercial principle; of our manipulation of political and even social forces to great financial ends; of our easy acquisition of fortunes; of our tremendous push and energy, directed to the accumulation of wealth. And of our enthusiasms, and institutions; our religions and their antagonisms, and of the many other things in which we take pride. And I learned that in Caskia there is no such thing as speculative enterprise. All business has an actual basis most discouraging to the adventurous spirit in search of sudden riches. There is no monetary skill worthy the dignified appellation of financial management,--and no use for that particular development of the talent of ingenuity.