“My dear sir,” he began, “if you are really a man, then you can tell me something of great importance.”

“I” Chick retorted, “can tell you nothing until you first let me know just where I stand!”

Certainly there was a lack of common ground.  Until one of them supplied it, there could be no headway.  Watson realised that his whole future might revolve about the axis of his next words.

The Rhamda thought a moment, dubiously, like one who has had a pet theory damaged, though not shattered.  Suddenly he spoke to the woman.

“Open the portal,” said he.

She stepped to the oval window, touched a latch, and swung the pane horizontally upon two pivots.  Immediately the room was flooded with a strange effulgence, amber-like, soft and mellow, as real sunshine.

But it was not real sunshine!

The window was set in a rather thick wall, beyond which Watson could see a royal sapphiric sky, flecked with white and purple and amethyst-threaded clouds poised above a great amber sleeping sun.

It was the sun that challenged attention.  It was so mild, and yet so utterly beyond what might be expected.  In diameter it would have made six of the one Watson had known; in the blue distance, touching the rim of the horizon, it looked exactly like a huge golden plate set edgewise on the end of the earth.

And—­he could look straight at it without blinking!

His thoughts ran back to the first account of the Rhamda.  The man had looked straight at the sun and had been blinded.  This accounted for it!  The man had been accustomed to this huge, soft-glowing beauty.  An amberous sun, deep yellow, sleeping; could it be, after all, dreamland?

But there were other things:  the myriad tintinnabulations of these microscopic bells, never ceasing, musically throbbing; and now, the exotic delight of the softest of perfumes, an air barely tinted with violet and rose, and the breath of woodland wild flowers.  He could not comprehend it.  He looked at the purple clouds above the lotus sun, hardly believing, and deeply in doubt.

A great white bird dived suddenly out of the heavens and flew into the focus of his vision.  In all the tales of his boyhood, of large and beautiful rocs and other birds, he had come across nothing like this.  From the perspective it must have measured a full three hundred feet from tip to tip; it was shaped like a swan and flew like an eagle, with magnificent, lazy sweeps of the wings; while its plumage was as white as the snow, new fallen on the mountains.  And right behind it, in pursuit, hurtled a huge black thing, fully as large and just as swift; a tremendous black crow, so black that its sides gave off a greenish shimmer.

Just then the woman closed the window.  It was as well; Watson was only human, and he could hide his curiosity just so long and no longer.  He turned to the Rhamda.

The man nodded.  “I thought so,” said he with satisfaction, as one might who has proven a pet and previous theory.