I drank with those gentle roisterers all through their starlit night, and if we stopped when morning came it was more from weariness than virtue.

Then the yellow-robed slaves gave us the wine of recovery--alas! my faithful An was not amongst them--and all through the day we lay about in sodden happiness.
Towards nightfall I was myself again, not unfortunately with the headache well earned, but sufficiently remorseful to be in a vein to make good resolutions for the future.
In this mood I mingled with a happy crowd, all purposeless and cheerful as usual, but before long began to feel the influence of one of those drifts, a universal turning in one direction, as seaweed turns when the tide changes, so characteristic of Martian society.

It was dusk, a lovely soft velvet dusk, but not dark yet, and I said to a yellow-robed fairy at my side: "Whither away, comrade?
It is not eight bells yet.

Surely we are not going to be put to bed so early as this ?" "No," said that smiling individual, "it is the princess.

We are going to listen to Princess Heru in the palace square.