Beside the pool Naia paused as she turned from opening the window. Her figure was reflected from the motionless surface. Croft recognized it as a mirror in purpose, similar in all respects to those the ancient Phoenicians used. For a time she stood gazing at the image of her figure, then turned away to a chest, made of the wine-red wood, heavily bound with burnished copper bands.
Beside the chest, the room held several chairs and stools, and a molded copper couch covered with rich draperies.
Naia rummaged in the chest while Croft watched. She rose and turned with a garment in her hands. Gossamer it was, fine, soft, sheer, a cobweb of texture as she shook it out. It shimmered with an indefinable play of colors, transparent as gauze. She lifted a hand and unfastened the gown she wore from the heavy shoulder boss that held it in place.
CHAPTER V
PALOSIAN DIPLOMACY
Taken wholly by surprise, Croft caught one glimpse of a glowing, pliant figure, cinctured just above the hips by a golden girdle. Then, realizing that the maiden believed herself utterly alone, he turned to the open window and incontinently fled.
Light as a thistle-down in his sublimated self he emerged into the full Palosian day. Yet he quivered in his soul as with a chill. Naia of Aphur, Princess of the Tamarizian nation, was a woman to stir the soul of any man. And she was his—his! The thought blurred his senses as he rushed forth. His? A second thought gave him pause. His indeed, yet no more his now than always since their dual spirit had projected into the material world and had been lost each to the other how many eons ago? His—found now at last, yet unclaimable still! Unclaimable!
The thought was madness. Croft put it away—or tried. To distract himself he wandered over the city of Himyra stretched red in the Sirian ray. And as before he knew it vast. From the river it stretched in its red and white collection of walls both ways. He visited each part, finding it poorer and poorer as he wandered from the river to the walls until inside them, at all parts, save where the main avenue by the river reached the two principal gates, he found the poorest classes of the people dwelling in huts of yellow-red brick.
Yet Himyra was a wonderful place. Croft visited the quays along the Na, farthest from the gate, where he had entered with Prince Lakkon and his daughter hours before. They swarmed with life, were lined with boats, built principally of wood, though some were mere skin-covered coracles, more than anything else. They lay by the stone loading platforms, taking on or discharging the commerce of the Palosian world. Men, white and blue, swarmed about them, tugging, sweating, straining at their tasks, speaking a variety of tongues.