This brought his mind to the thing he had come to The Pleiad to do, and the revolution all around it, in the very air.  What a queer post—­in the very fortress of insurrection.  It was all boyish stuff.  Many adventures might accrue.  Would they be enough to keep his mind from realities?...  He feared not.  For an hour he sat there, regarding the lights of the city and harbor, until his thoughts grew too heavy, and the manacled lover within him was spent and blood-drawn from straining against his chains—­the captive that would not die....  He arose wearily to find that a letter had been thrust beneath his door, and so silently that he had not been aroused from his thoughts.  The paper was of palest blue and heavy-laid.  His name was written with a blunt pen in an angular, eccentric hand, and the contents proved unique: 

     MR. ANDREW BEDIENT,

SIR:  Many of my guests have caught the spirit of The Pleiad more readily and pleasurably, after making the acquaintance of one elsewhere designated, I believe, the proprietor.  We do not use the word here, as we are friends together.  The fact that my manager showed you apartments is enough to make me glad to welcome you.  He makes few mistakes.  Will you not dine with me at eight this evening in the Shield Room.  If you have a previous engagement, pray do not permit me to disturb it, as I shall be ready at your good time.

          With unwonted regard,

CELESTINO REY.

Bedient sat down again.  The systems of the house moved him to amusement and marvelling.  To think that the pale creature at the desk had weighed him from all angles of desirability; and like some more or less infallible Peter had allowed him to enter into the abiding peace of The Pleiad.  It was rather a morsel, that he had not been turned away.  Then to be invited to dine the first evening with the establishment’s presiding individuality, who did not approve of the term, “proprietor.”  There was a tropic, an orient, delight about the affair.

“To think a stranger must lose or win caste in Equatoria, on the glance of that Tired-eyed,” he mused.  “I really must master this atmosphere.”

Bedient thought of Treasure Island Inn, in the lower city, where a stranger would probably go, if denied entrance at The Pleiad.  “Infested” was the word Captain Carreras had once used to depict its denizens....  A few minutes before eight Bedient left the room and descended.  From the staircase, he perceived that the guests had, indeed, gathered at this hour.  The company was not large, but rather distinguished at first glance.  So various were the nationalities represented that Bedient thought the picture not unlike a court-ball with attaches present.  The hum of voices was quickened with half the tongues of Europe, and now and then an intonation of Asia.  There were more men than women, but this only accentuated the attractions of the latter, of which there were two or three sense-stirring blooms.