our damned
missionary airs, you shall have what I expect you call the crown of
martyrdom."

He whistled loud and shrill. Half-a-dozen men sprang from the bushes and
flung themselves upon me. I struggled, but was overpowered, and dragged
away. The last sight I had was of Lucius standing with a disdainful
smile, with Cynthia clinging to his arm; and to my horror and disgust
she was smiling too.

XXVII

I had somehow never expected to be used with positive violence in the
world of spirits, and least of all in that lazy and good-natured place.
Considering, too, the errand on which I had come, not for my own
convenience but for the sake of another, my treatment seemed to me very
hard. What was still more humiliating was the fact that my spirit seemed
just as powerless in the hands of these ruffians as my body would have
been on earth. I was pushed, hustled, insulted, hurt. I could have
summoned Amroth to my aid, but I felt too proud for that; yet the
thought of the cragmen, and the possibility of the second death, did
visit my mind with dismal iteration. I did not at all desire a further
death; I felt very much alive, and full of interest and energy. Worst
of all was my sense that Cynthia had gone over to the enemy. I had been
so loftily kind with her, that I much resented having appeared in her
sight as feeble and ridiculous. It is difficult to preserve any dignity
of demeanour or thought, with a man's hand at one's neck and his knee in
one's back: and I felt that Lucius had displayed a really Satanical
malignity in using this particular means of degrading me in Cynthia's
sight, and of regaining his own lost influence.

I was thrust and driven before my captors along an alley in the garden,
and what added to my discomfiture was that a good many people ran
together to see us pass, and watched me with decided amusement. I was
taken finally to a little pavilion of stone, with heavily barred
windows, and a flagged marble floor. The room was absolutely bare, and
contained neither seat nor table. Into this I was thrust, with some
obscene jesting, and the door was locked upon me.

The time passed very heavily. At intervals I heard music burst out
among the alleys, and a good many people came to peep in upon me
with an amused curiosity. I was entirely bewildered by my position,
and did not see what I could have done to have incurred my punishment.
But in the solitary hours that followed I began to have a suspicion
of