The Amphitheatre of Jet For hours the black-haired folk had been streaming across the bridges, flowing along the promenade by scores and by hundreds, drifting down toward the gigantic seven-terraced temple whose interior I had never as yet seen, and from whose towering exterior, indeed, I had always been kept far enough away--unobtrusively, but none the less decisively--to prevent any real observation.

The structure, I had estimated, nevertheless, could not reach less than a thousand feet above its silvery base, and the diameter of its circular foundation was about the same.
I wondered what was bringing the _ladala_ into Lora, and where they were vanishing.

All of them were flower-crowned with the luminous, lovely blooms--old and young, slender, mocking-eyed girls, dwarfed youths, mothers with their babes, gnomed oldsters--on they poured, silent for the most part and sullen--a sullenness that held acid bitterness even as their subtle, half-sinister, half-gay malice seemed tempered into little keen-edged flames, oddly, menacingly defiant.
There were many of the green-clad soldiers along the way, and the garrison of the only bridge span I could see had certainly been doubled.
Wondering still, I turned from my point of observation and made my way back to our pavilion, hoping that Larry, who had been with Yolara for the past two hours, had returned.

Hardly had I reached it before Rador came hurrying up, in his manner a curious exultance mingled with what in anyone else I would have called a decided nervousness.
"Come!" he commanded before I could speak.

"The Council has made decision--and _Larree_ is awaiting you." "What has been decided ?" I panted as we sped along the mosaic path that led to the house of Yolara.