I was noticing the crooked black nail which jutted out from the window-frame just beside my shoulder; the white fleck on one of Ooldra’s fingernails; the intriguing texture of the nearly dry puddles we continually passed; but such things as the overall palpitation of the dying sun, the palpitating fluctuating red wind, the grey architecture, the rows and rows of grey architecture, the disconnected people, the lights hanging from the balconies, the occasional tree, often rooted so far in to the centre of the roadway that the carriage could only just scrape between its trunk and the high side-paving—at these things I gazed earnestly to realize them, earnestly, but after a moment of blank inaction they whirled in to take their place in the whirling unstable elated fever which at the moment was myself. My head ached and I knew that I would be sick except for this incredible elation which was cold and high and yet palpitating and held me together even while it was the cause of my nausea.

Sunset and old rain—copper contended with grey, the blur grew, the streets were a soft queer colour. The houses were dark masses, the sky between them was soft, pinkly, y ^wily, silverily pearly. Almost all the small spheres which hung from arches and balconies were lit. The carriage passed through arches: low black apertures, grey stone crumbling, fungus dripping from cracks, movement over the stones which if one looked definitely one would see as the movement not of dying sunlight but of small lank reptiles: the sort of stonework to which I am accustomed. There were squat buildings on these arches. Most of them looked deserted.

People walked across the pavements and disappeared into the half-lit doorways which threw reflections out at the road way. There were even a few other carriages; their wheels whirred and vibrated as they passed. Though it was hard to hear much, over the roar of our own wheels and the marching men.

Few of the people stared as we passed; Ooldra has told me we were in a plain carriage and there have been so many carriages going to camp in the last few days.

The Dictatress, leaning back inside the carriage, looked thoughtfully up from her clasped fingertips.

“How do you like your city, Cija?”

I murmured something in a polite, small, unnatural voice.

The Dictatress nodded.

There were small satisfied upward-lines at the corners of her mouth.

She leaned back and looked pleasantly up at the ceiling.

“You’re about to embark on a very thrilling life,” the Dictatress said.

I turned and looked at her.

“I am very afraid,” I said.

“You don’t look afraid.”

“I have no real emotion at the moment. But I have been afraid and I will be afraid again.”

“Naturally. How strange all this is to you, and it is never a pleasant task to kill a man. But just remember what a monster he is.”