in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear
down the black hole, and, in a trembling voice, whispered:

"Never! ... I will not have you go there! ... Besides, it's not mine
... EVERYTHING THAT IS UNDERGROUND BELONGS TO HIM!"

Raoul looked her in the eyes and said roughly:

"So he lives down there, does he?"

"I never said so ... Who told you a thing like that? Come away! I
sometimes wonder if you are quite sane, Raoul ... You always take
things in such an impossible way ... Come along! Come!"

And she literally dragged him away, for he was obstinate and wanted to
remain by the trap-door; that hole attracted him.

Suddenly, the trap-door was closed and so quickly that they did not
even see the hand that worked it; and they remained quite dazed.

"Perhaps HE was there," Raoul said, at last.

She shrugged her shoulders, but did not seem easy.

"No, no, it was the 'trap-door-shutters.' They must do something, you
know ... They open and shut the trap-doors without any particular
reason ... It's like the 'door-shutters:' they must spend their time
somehow."

"But suppose it were HE, Christine?"

"No, no! He has shut himself up, he is working."

"Oh, really! He's working, is he?"

"Yes, he can't open and shut the trap-doors and work at the same time."
She shivered.

"What is he working at?"

"Oh, something terrible! ... But it's all the better for us... When
he's working at that, he sees nothing; he does not eat, drink, or
breathe for days and nights at a time ... he becomes a living dead man
and has no time to amuse himself with the trap-doors." She shivered
again. She was still holding him in her arms. Then she sighed and
said, in her turn:

"Suppose it were HE!"

"Are you afraid of him?"

"No, no, of course not," she said.

For all that, on the next day and the following days, Christine was
careful to avoid the trap-doors. Her agitation only increased as the
hours passed. At last, one afternoon, she arrived very late, with her
face so desperately pale and her eyes so desperately red, that Raoul
resolved to go to all lengths, including that which he foreshadowed
when he blurted out that he would not go on the North Pole expedition
unless she first told him the secret of the man's voice.

"Hush! Hush, in Heaven's name! Suppose HE heard you, you unfortunate
Raoul!"

And Christine's eyes stared wildly at everything around her.

"I will remove you from his power, Christine, I