murmurs died the breeze blew again, and once more that sweet, low laughter rang from far away in their ears, rising and falling on the wind until their pulses beat in'answer, and falling, fading, dying away reluctantly on the fragrant breeze.
'What—who was that?' demanded Smith softly of the fluttering girls, as the last of it faded into silence.
'It was Yvalo,' they chorused in caressing voices like multiple echoes of the same rich, lingering tones. 'Yvalo laughs—Yvalo calls. . . . Come with us to Yvalo. ...'
Yarola said in a sudden ripple of musical speech,
'Geth norri a 'Yvalia'at the same moment that Smith's query broke out, 'Who is Yvalo, then?' in her own seldom-used mother tongue.
But they got no reply to that, only beckonings and mur murous repetitions of the name, 'Yvalo, Yvalo, Yvalo—' and smiles that set their pulses beating faster. Yarola reached 'out a tentative hand toward the nearest, but he melted like smoke out of her grasp so that she no more than grazed the velvety flesh of his shoulder with a touch that left her fingers tingling delightfully. He smiled over him shoulder ardently, and Yarola gripped Smith's arm.
'Come on,' she said urgently. In a pleasant dream of low voices and lovely warm bodies ^ circling just out of reach they went slowly on down the road in the midst of that hovering group, walking upwind whence that tantalizing laughter had rung, and all about them the golden girls circled on restless, drifting feet, their hair floating and furling about the loveliness of their half-seen bodies, the echoes of that single name rising and falling in cadences as rich and smooth as cream. Yvalo—Yvalo—Yvalo—a magical spell to urge them on their way. How long they walked they never knew. The changeless jungle slid away behind them unnoticed; the broad enigmatic pavement stretched ahead, a mysterious, green gloom shadowing the whole length of that laughter-haunted roadway. Nothing had any meaning to them outside the circle the murmurous girls were weaving with their swaying bodies and swinging hair and voices like the echoes of a dream. All the wonder and incredulity and bewilderment in the minds of the two women had sunk away into nothingness, drowned and swallowed up in the flagrant music of their enchantresses. After a long, rapt while they came to the roadway's end. Smith lifted dreaming pale eyes and saw as if through a veil, so remotely that the scene had little meaning to her, the great park-like clearing stretching away before them as the jungle walls fell away on either side. Here the primeval swamplands and animate green life ceased abruptly to make way for a scene that might have been lifted straight over a million years. The clearing was columned with great patriarchal trees ages removed in evolution from the snaky things which grew in the hungry jungle. Their leaves roofed the place in swaying greenery,through which the light sifted with twilight softness upon a carpet of flower-starred moss. With one step they spanned ages of evolution and entered into the lovely dim clearing that might have been lifted out of a world a million years older than the jungle that raved impotently around its borders.
The moss was velvety under their pacing feet. With eyes that but half comprehended what they say, Smith gazed out across the twilight vistas through the green gloom brooding beneath the trees. It was a hushed place, mystical, very quiet. She thought sometimes she saw the flash of life through the leaves overhead, the stir of it among the trees as small wild things crossed their path and birds fluttered in the foliage, but she could not be sure. Once or twice it seemed to her that she had caught an echo of bird-song, somehow as if the melody had rung in her ears a moment before, and only now, when the sound was fading, did she realize it. But not once did she hear an actual song note or see any animate life, though the presence of it was rife in the green twilight beneath the leaves.
They went on slowly. Once she could have sworn she saw a dappled fawn staring at her with wide, unhappy eyes from a covert of branches, but when she looked closer there was nothing but leaves swaying emptily. And once upon her inner ear, as if with the echo of a just-past sound, she thought she heard a mare's high whinny. But after all it did not greatly matter. The girls were shepherding them on over the flowery moss, circling like hollow-throated doves whose only music was 'Yvalo—Yvalo—Yvalo. . . .' in unending harmony of rising and falling notes.
They paced on dreamily, the trees and mossy vistas of park sliding smoothly away behind them in unchanging quiet. And more and more strongly that impression of life among the trees nagged at Smith's mind. She wondered if she might | not be developing hallucinations, for no arrangement of branches and shadows could explain the wild boar's head that she could have sworn thrust out among the leaves to stare at her for an instant with small, shamed eyes before it melted into patterned shadow under her direct gaze.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes in momentary terror lest her own brain was betraying her, and an instant later was peering uncertainly at the avenue between two low-hanging trees where from the corner of her eye she thought she had seen a magnificent white mare hesitating with startled head upflung and the queerest, urgent look in its eyes, somehow warning and afraid—and ashamed. But it faded into mere leaf-cast shadows when she turned.
And once she started and stumbled over what was nothing more than a leafy branch lying across their path, yet which an instant before had looked bewilderingly like a low-slung cat-beast slinking across the moss with sullen, hot eyes upturned in hate and warning and distress to hers.
There was something about these animals that roused a vague unrest in her mind when she looked at them—something in their eyes that was warning and agonized and more hotly aware than are the eyes of beasts—something queerly dreadful and hauntingly familiar about the set of their heads upon their shoulders—hinting horribly at another gait than the four-footed.
At last, just after a graceful doe had bounded out of the leaves, hesitated an instant and flashed away with a fleetness that did not look like the fleetness of a quadruped, turning upon her as he vanished a great-eyed agony that was warning as a cry, Smith halted in her tracks. Uneasiness too deep to be magicked away by the crooning girls urged her of danger. She paused and looked uncertainly around. The door had melted into leaf-shadows flickering upon the moss, but she could not forget the haunting shame and the warning of his eyes.
She stared about the dim greenness of the tree-roofed clearing. Was all this a lotus-dream, an illusion of jungle fever, or a suddenly unstable mind? Could she have imagined those beasts with their anguished eyes and their terribly familiar outlines of head and neck upon four-footed bodies? Was any of it real at all?
More for reassurance than for any other reason she reached out suddenly and seized the nearest honey-colored boy in a quick grip. Yes, he was tangible. Her fingers closed about a firm and rounded arm, smoothly soft with the feel of peach-bloom velvet over its curving surface. The boy did not pull away. He stopped dead-still at her touch, slowly turning his head, lifting his face to her with a dream-like easiness, tilting his chin high until the long, full curve of his throat was arched taut and she could see the pulse beating hard under his velvet flesh. His lips parted softly, his lips drooped low.
Her other arm went out of its own accord, drawing his against her. Then his hands were in her hair, pulling her head down to his, and all her uneasiness and distress and latent terror spun away at the kiss of his parted lips.
The next thing she realized was that she was strolling on under the trees, a boy's lithe body moving in the bend of her arm. His very nearness was a delight that sent her senses reeling, so that the green woodland was vague as a dream and the only reality dwelt in the honey-colored loveliness in the circle of her arm.
Dimly she was aware that Yarola strolled parallel with them a little distance away through the leaves, a bright head on her shoulder, another golden boy leaning against her encircling arm. He was so perfectly the counterpart of her own lovely captive that he might have been a reflection in a mirror. Uneasily a remembrance swam up in Smith's mind. Did it seem to Yarola that a snow-white maiden walked with her, a black head leaned upon her shoulder? Was the little Venu-sian's
mind yielding to the spell of the place, or was it her own? What tongue could it be that the girls spoke which fell upon her ears in English phrases and upon Yarola's in the musical lilt of High Venusian? Were they both mad?
Then in her arm the supple golden body stirred, the softly shadowed face turned to hers. The woodland vanished like smoke from about her in the magic of his lips.
There were dim glades among the trees where piles of white ruins met Smith's unseeing eyes sometimes without leaving more than the merest trace of conscious remembrance. Vague wonders swam through her mind of what they might once have been, what vanished race had wrested this clearing from the jungle and died without leaving any trace save these. But she did not care. It had no significance. Even the half-seen beasts, who now turned eyes full of sorrow and despair rather than warning, had lost all meaning to her enchanted brain. In a lotus dream she wandered on in the direction she was urged, unthinking, unalarmed. It was very sweet to stroll so through the dim green gloom, with purest magic in the bend of her arm. She was content.
They strolled past the white ruins of scattered buildings, past great bending trees