“Give, give this to me please. I shall have it phonographed and make the children learn it by heart. Not only your Venerians need all this, but we ourselves right now, tomorrow, day-after-tomorrow.”

She glanced around and said in a very low voice:

“Have you heard, they say that on the Day of Unanimity⁠—”

I sprang to my feet.

“What? What do they say? What⁠—on the Day of Unanimity?”

The coziness of my room, its very walls, seemed to have vanished. I felt myself thrown outside, where the tremendous, shaggy wind was tossing about and where the slanting clouds of dusk were descending lower and lower.⁠ ⁠…