were for war. Nevertheless when they perceived that that war for which
they watched was not now come upon them, they lowered their spears and
suffered him to enter, and he passed whirring through the earthward
gateway. Even so he came, as foretold, to the City of Never perched
upon Toldenarba, and saw late twilight on those pinnacles that know no
other light. All the domes were of copper, but the spires on their
summits were gold. Little steps of onyx ran all this way and that.
With cobbled agates were its streets a glory. Through small square
panes of rose-quartz the citizens looked from their houses. To them as
they looked abroad the World far-off seemed happy. Clad though that
city was in one robe always, in twilight, yet was its beauty worthy of
even so lovely a wonder: city and twilight were both peerless but for
each other. Built of a stone unknown in the world we tread were its
bastions, quarried we known not where, but called by the gnomes
_abyx_, it so flashed back to the twilight its glories, colour for
colour, that none can say of them where their boundary is, and which
the eternal twilight, and which the City of Never; they are the
twin-born children, the fairest daughters of Wonder. Time had been
there, but not to the domes that were made of copper, the rest he had
left untouched, even he, the destroyer of cities, by what bribe I know
not averted. Nevertheless they often wept in Never for change and
passing away, mourning catastrophes in other worlds, and they built
temples sometimes to ruined stars that had fallen flaming down from
the Milky Way, giving them worship still when by us long since
forgotten. Other temples they have--who knows to what divinities?

And he that was destined alone of men to come to the City of Never was
well content to behold it as he trotted down its agate street, with
the wings of his hippogriff furled, seeing at either side of him
marvel on marvel of which even China is ignorant. Then as he neared