f the
proud white neck, shyly kissing it. From her shoulders fell a loose,
sleeveless garment of shimmering green belted with a high golden
girdle; skirt folds dropping barely below the knees.

She had cast aside her buskins, too, and the slender, high-arched feet
were sandalled. Between the buckled edges of her kirtle I caught
gleams of translucent ivory as exquisitely moulded, as delectably
rounded, as those revealed so naively beneath the hem.

Something was knocking at the doors of my consciousness--some tragic
thing. What was it? Larry! Where was Larry? I remembered; raised my
head abruptly; saw at my side another frog-man carrying O'Keefe, and
behind him, Olaf, step instinct with grief, following like some
faithful, wistful dog who has lost a loved master. Upon my movement
the monster bearing me halted, looked down inquiringly, uttered a
deep, booming note that held the quality of interrogation.

Lakla turned; the clear, golden eyes were sorrowful, the sweet mouth
drooping; but her loveliness, her gentleness, that undefinable
synthesis of all her tender self that seemed always to circle her with
an atmosphere of lucid normality, lulled my panic.

"Drink this," she commanded, holding a small vial to my lips.

Its contents were aromatic, unfamiliar but astonishingly effective,
for as soon as they passed my lips I felt a surge of strength;
consciousness was restored.

"Larry!" I cried. "Is he dead?"

Lakla shook her head; her eyes were troubled.

"No," she said; "but he is like one dead--and yet unlike--"

"Put me down," I demanded of my bearer.

He tightened his hold; round eyes upon the Golden Girl. She spoke--in
sonorous, reverberating monosyllables--and I was set upon my feet; I
leaped to the side of the Irishman. He lay limp, with a disquieting,
abnormal sequacity, as though every muscle were utterly flaccid; the
antithesis of the _rigor mortis_, thank God, but terrifyingly toward
the other end of its arc; a syncope I had never known. The flesh was
stone cold; the pulse barely perceptible, long intervalled; the
respiration undiscoverable; the pupils of the eyes were enormously
dilated; it was as though life had been drawn from every nerve.

"A light flashed from the road. It struck his face and seemed to sink
in," I said.

"I saw," answered Rador; "but what it was I know not; and I thought I
knew all the weapons of our rulers." He glanced at me curiously. "Some
talk there has been that the stran