consideration, I resolved that enlightened philosophy compelled me to abolish a heathen religion so superstitiously at variance with modern thought and practical action.  Musing over these various projects, I felt how much I should have liked at that moment to brighten my wits by a good glass of whiskey-and-water.  Not that I am habitually a spirit-drinker, but certainly there are times when a little stimulant of alcoholic nature, taken with a cigar, enlivens the imagination.  Yes; certainly among these herbs and fruits there would be a liquid from which one could extract a pleasant vinous alcohol; and with a steak cut off one of those elks (ah! what offence to science to reject the animal food which our first medical men agree in recommending to the gastric juices of mankind!) one would certainly pass a more exhilarating hour of repast.  Then, too, instead of those antiquated dramas performed by childish amateurs, certainly, when I am king, I will introduce our modern opera and a ‘corps de ballet,’ for which one might find, among the nations I shall conquer, young females of less formidable height and thews than the Gy-ei—­not armed with vril, and not insisting upon one’s marrying them.

I was so completely rapt in these and similar reforms, political, social, and moral, calculated to bestow on the people of the nether world the blessings of a civilisation known to the races of the upper, that I did not perceive that Zee had entered the chamber till I heard a deep sigh, and, raising my eyes, beheld her standing by my couch.

I need not say that, according to the manners of this people, a Gy can, without indecorum, visit an An in his chamber, although an An would be considered forward and immodest to the last degree if he entered the chamber of a Gy without previously obtaining her permission to do so.  Fortunately I was in the full habiliments I had worn when Zee had deposited me on the couch.  Nevertheless I felt much irritated, as well as shocked, by her visit, and asked in a rude tone what she wanted.

“Speak gently, beloved one, I entreat you,” said she, “for I am very unhappy.  I have not slept since we parted.”

“A due sense of your shameful conduct to me as your father’s guest might well suffice to banish sleep from your eyelids.  Where was the affection you pretend to have for me, where was even that politeness on which the Vril-ya pride themselves, when, taking advantage alike of that physical strength in which your sex, in this extraordinary region, excels our own, and of those detestable and unhallowed powers which the agencies of vril invest in your eyes and finger-ends, you exposed me to humiliation before your assembled visitors, before Her Royal Highness—­I mean, the daughter of your own chief magistrate,—­carrying me off to bed like a naughty infant, and plunging me into sleep, without asking my consent?”