Poor things! Nobody pays any attention to them; everybody detests them.

To me they owe whatever they get between meals." As if scenting the proximity of food, one of the three stones suddenly shuddered with a polychromatic chill.

Its elastic covering began swelling.

There passed over its surface stripes of color, reddish clouds changing from crimson to green, circular spots that became inflated in the swelling, forming tremulous excrescences.

Between two cracks there appeared a yellowish eye of ferocious and stupid fixity; a darkened and malignant globe like that of serpents, was now looking toward the crystal as though seeing far beyond that diamond wall.
"They know me!" exclaimed Freya joyously.