Croft smiled. "Tomorrow," he went on, "I return to Himyra to arrange for the making of lights, and a demonstration of their working when the time is ripe." And suddenly his whole face lighted at an inward thought. "Naia—Rob. Tell me of her." For suddenly at the mention of his return her picture had leaped before him; the certainty had come upon him that in Himyra he should meet her, speak to her, dwell beneath the roof of the same house. And the accomplishment at which Robur, of Himyra, was staring in awestruck wonder—the great dynamo, successful in its primary test, and all it stood for—sank into nothingness before the thought. Naia of Aphur's face, the hinted perfume of her presence, blotted it out.
"Thou wilt see her," said Robur—"of course." It was as though he read Croft's thought. "And could you see her now as each sun I see her, perchance you would feel as do I, that she will be glad of your coming now at last. Like one without purpose she moves, Jason, my strange friend, whom I love as no other man, yet do not understand. There is the look of one who waits for one who comes not in her eyes. In their purple depths they hold a question ever that makes them doubly dark. Yet if at times I say I am driving forth to meet you, I have seen her lay a white hand over Ga's snowy fountain beneath her robe. I have seen her lips part as though to speak or question concerning thee, and having returned, I have known that her ears were like thirsty lips to drink in what reports I made regarding the progress of your work. Yet in such mood is she sweeter, more desirable as it seems to me, than ever in her life."
Croft nodded. "Not more desirable to me," he said, "than the first sun whereon I saw her. Today I place a guard and send the workmen back to Himyra. Tomorrow I shall come."
CHAPTER XIV
BEATING WINGS
Naia of Aphur—Naia! He was now to meet her again in the flesh. The thought held Croft as he drove toward Himyra the next day. He was to meet her, as at Zitra, not as in the mountains beside the stream he had harnessed to his and Tamarizia's purpose, but in Robur's palace, where, like himself, she was a guest—under conditions where the conventions of social life, not so far unlike those of earth, since human nature is, after all, very much the same, would compel a certain courtesy in their association at least.
Toward that meeting he went more like an ardent lover than anything else. Once in the palace, he sent for a barber and had his hair carefully trimmed. For an hour after that he lay while a Mazzerian masseur rubbed softening oils into his skin. And then he dressed in a costume he had ordered made when he returned from Zitra first, unlike old Zud's robes, and of his own designing—a costume of golden leg cases studded with sapphire-hued stones—an undervest of gossamer tissue—a short skirt of a heavier material, white in color, with a silken sheen, and a cuirass of gold and silver, with the wings of Azil and the cross ansata, inlaid on the breast-plate in more of the sapphire-like gems. Of gold and silver was his helmet topped with a crest of azure plumes. Robur came in upon him, having barely returned from the shops, as he put it on.
"Zitu!" he exclaimed, pausing to stare at his friend, and went on: "Jason, thou art a sight—"
"A sight, yes—" Croft cut him short with a heightened color. He laughed. "Rob—there are times when your tongue reminds me of speech on earth. Were I there at this moment, they would name me a sight indeed."