needlessly. Show me sufficient cause, and you shall kill me where
and how you please. Come, begin the accusation."

"You are a tyrant."

"At least I have not paraded my tyrannies in Atlantis these
twenty years. Why, Nais, I did but land yesterday."

"You will not deny you came back from Yucatan for a purpose."

"I came back because I was sent for. The Empress gives no
reasons for her recalls. She states her will; and we who serve her
obey without question."

"Pah, I know that old dogma."

"If you discredit my poor honesty at the outset like this, I
fear we shall not get far with our unravelling."

"My lord must be indeed simple," said this strange woman
scornfully, "if he is ignorant of what all Atlantis knows."

"Then simple you must write me down. Over yonder in Yucatan
we were too well wrapped up in our own parochial needs and policies
to have leisure to ponder much over the slim news which drifted out
to us from Atlantis--and, in truth, little enough came. By
example, Phorenice (whose office be adored) is a great personage
here at home; but over there in the colony we barely knew so much
as her name. Here, since I have been ashore, I have seen many new
wonders; I have been carried by a riding mammoth; I have sat at a