"Miss Dodan," I began, fearful to use her first name through a reluctance that was itself the expression of the deep love I bore her, "Miss Dodan, I may for some time yet be engaged in this now imperative work. I cannot, you know, now leave it. It is the most marvellous thing the world has ever known. It means so much to me, indeed to us all. These messages are erratic—fitful. I have now waited for weeks for a renewal of these strange communications and there is nothing. But in the midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment me. I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you all the devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an instant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait, until the depthless power of my love for you can be made clear."
I would have sunk upon my knees in the abasement and passion of my desire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her arms about my neck and placed her head where—well, I am no connoisseur in love scenes—but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gave her heart to me.
We passed back in silence, and when she left me the fluttering handkerchief that had so often waved back its salutation on the winding distant road was now in my hands, and its signals sent by me came to her from the plateau. It was the simple pledge of our mutual love, a pledge that even now as I prepare these last pages of a manuscript that is a testament to the world, soothes my pain and renews the happiness of that day, forever and forever lost.
The next message came a few days after my interview with Miss Dodan. It was a rainy day in November—the spring time of that Southern land. The register was heard by one of my assistants, Jack Jobson, a man who had unremittingly taken my place when I was absent, and who seemed more than anyone else dazed and wonder stricken over the experience we had. He came running to me, a wild terror in his face, exclaiming, "It's going again, sir. Hurry! It's running slow." I sprang upstairs, and before I had reached it heard the telltale clicks. It was not altogether a sheltered position, and as I reached the table I felt the bleak and chilly air penetrating the crevices of the window, a raw ocean breeze that in a few instants crept through my bones. But I was again unconscious of everything; that marvellous ticking obliterated all thought of earth, its affairs, accidents, dangers, loves, hopes, despairs, all forgotten, swallowed up in the immeasurable revelation I was about to receive.
The second message began at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of November 25, 1893, two months exactly after the first. Its very opening sentences I failed to get. It lasted late into the morning of the next day. The strain of taking it was somehow singularly intense upon me. I was taken from the table the next morning unconscious. I had fainted at the close. It began, as I received it, a few opening sentences having been lost:
"…was sent to you I was in the City of Light, and now I am in the City of Scandor.
"The morning of that wonderful night in which I became a flesh and blood Martian, strong and young and beautiful, dawned fair. My friend came for me, and we went together to the great 'Commons' of the Patenta, a superb hall where all the professors, investigators, and students in the great Academy sit at many tables. This huge dining room is at the center of the group of buildings which make up the Patenta. Corridors lead into it from the four sections of the Patenta, and as we entered, from the different sides there were many men and some women taking the ivory chairs at the side's of the long tables of marble, on which rose in beautiful confusion of color crowded vases of fruits.
"Surrounding the room are niches instead of windows, and in each niche one noble symbolic figure in white or colored marble.
"Light fell in a torrent of glory through the faintly opalescent glass compartments of the ceiling, from which, at the intersection of the broad and long rafters of blue metal, hung chandeliers formed in branching arms with cup-like extremities, and holding spheres of the omnipresent phosphori.
"I stood a moment with my companion at the entrance of the great dining room, and watched the groups and individual arrivals, as they assorted themselves into companies or engaged in some short interchange of greetings. It was a very beautiful scene. The faces of all were wonderfully clear and strong, and in the commingling of forms, the bold, intellectual features of some, the more rare, delicate outlines of other faces, the flowing of the graceful tunics and robes, the pleasant, musical confusion of voices, with the quick, glancing movements of attendants, the heaped up chalices and baskets, vases and broad spreading plates of fruit, the many carelessly arranged and profuse bunches of radiant flowers in tall receptacles of glass or alabaster, in all this, with the strong, simple architectural features of the Hall, the eye and mind and senses seemed equally stimulated and satisfied.