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“Dear Eva,” I persisted mildly, ignoring these symptoms, “I have done everything I can to satisfy you. When you rejected me, I put myself out of the way. Now that we have both reappeared, I efface myself as your lover. Let us go forward, hand in hand, as members of one family as children of the future, and common sense friends.”

Fortunately, at this moment Graemantle came back. “Good friends,” he said heartily, “I am delighted to have brought you together again!”

He had touched the right note. Eva’s lips curved into a correct expression as of pleasure, and she began at once to play her part of friend and sister, to my role of brother, with great skill and grace.

“I don’t know just how the Kurol or Mars missionary is coming,” Graemantle went on, “but we shall receive word soon. I sent for my ward, Electra, and my young friend Hammerfleet to assist us in receiving him. They have arrived, and I want to present them to you both.”

So saying he touched a lever by the wall; the entire side of the room swung open, and he ushered us into a spacious apartment the assembly-room of the inn where stood, beautifully draped in white with a single diamond of marvelous luster flashing from the rich dark hair above her forehead, a woman of the noblest stature and best proportioned form I had ever seen.

“This is Electra,” said our guardian; and turning to her: “You know our friends already, by name and record.”

She bowed graciously, and came forward with a smile so absolutely sincere that I could not recall having beheld the like of it before; and she took each of us by the hand in welcome. Then we discovered behind her a tall man, black bearded, almost forbidding in his gravity, but wonderfully handsome, and enveloped in the soft, pliable suit of silk, tinted with prismatic, delicate colors, that everyone, apparently, wore nowadays. “Hammerfleet,” said Electra; and we were at once acquainted with him.

I learned afterwards that artificial silk was made in unlimited quantities by squirting nitrocellulose into a continuously worked vacuous space and then reducing it to cellulose by hot sulphydrate of ammonia and pressure, and had taken the place of cotton and woolen goods among the well-to-do.

At the moment, however, the only thought I could grasp was that Electra had impressed me deeply and tenderly. How could anyone help this with her? She was exquisite, serene, commanding, and absolutely without humbug.

It had been a surprise to me to find that I no longer loved Eva Pryor. It was not at all a surprise that I should be captivated by Electra. Charming though Eva was in her way, she had perhaps placed herself at a disadvantage by having insisted on keeping her nineteenth century costume. The angular slope and spread of her skirt, her unnatural wasp waist, the swollen sleeves, and the stiff, ungainly bulging of her corsage had a grotesque and even offensive effect. The extraordinary tangle, also, of artificial flowers, wings, and other rubbish that she carried on her head-for she still wore her hat — was as barbaric or savage as the head-dress, of some early Norse warrior or Red Indian chief.

To all this Electra presented a refreshing contrast of harmony, with grace and dignity and a style of dress modern, yet classic, womanly, yet suggesting the robes of a goddess.

I must have made my impulsive admiration for her very evident, for within a few minutes I was aware that Eva had grown sad and ill at ease, and that Hammerfleet was darting at me half-suppressed glances of anger and jealousy. “So the wind sits in that quarter,” I meditated, “and he’s in love with Electra!”

But the talk turned at once to the new anti-gravitation machine or Interstellar Express car. “There have been a number of them made,” remarked Graemantle; and proceeded to show us one in the house. “A good while ago there was discovered in the Hudson’s Bay country great masses of ore containing metal which yielded the spectroscopic line of Helium, a metal unknown