“You mean instead of being with the others?” she returned. “I have not been well lately, and I thought—or my husband thought—I had better not join the procession. I am awaiting them here.”
As she spoke, I noticed that she was rather delicate looking. She was tall and slight, with large, bright eyes, and a transparent complexion. If Elodia had not filled all space in my consciousness I think I should have been considerably interested in her. I liked her frank, direct way of meeting us and talking to us. We soon left her and continued our explorations.
I wanted to ask Severnius something about her, but I thought he avoided the subject. He told me, however, that her husband, Massilia, was one of his closest friends. And then he added, “I wonder that she took his advice!”
“Why so,” I asked; “do not women here ever take their husbands’ advice?”
“Claris is not in the habit of doing so,” he returned with, I thought, some severity. And then he immediately spoke of something else quite foreign to her.
The third and last story comprised an immense hall or assembly room, and rows of deep closets for the robes and paraphernalia of the members of the Order. In one of these closets a skeleton was suspended from the ceiling and underneath it stood a coffin. On a shelf were three skulls with their accompanying cross-bones, and several cruel-looking weapons.
Severnius said he supposed these hideous tokens were employed in the initiation of new members. It seemed incredible. I thought that, if it were so, the Marsian women must have stronger nerves than ours.
A great many beautiful marble columns and pillars supported the roof of the hall, and the walls had a curiously fluted appearance. There was a great deal of sculpture, not only figures, but flowers, vines, and all manner of decorations,—even draperies chiseled in marble that looked like frozen lace, with an awful stillness in their ghostly folds. There was a magnificent canopied throne on an elevation like an old-fashioned pulpit, and seats for satellites on either side, and at the base. If I had been alone, I would have gone up and knelt down before the throne,—for of course that was where Elodia sat,—and I would have kissed the yellow cushion on which her feet were wont to rest when she wielded her jeweled scepter. The scepter, I observed, lay on the throne-chair.