sun go down," he whispered to her. Vaguely I wondered why she blushed.

But now I must hasten. We went to the temple, and here at least the
ghastly litter of the dead had been cleaned away. We passed through
the blue-caverned space, crossed the narrow arch that spanned the
rushing sea stream, and, ascending, stood again upon the ivoried pave
at the foot of the frowning, towering amphitheatre of jet.

Across the Silver Waters there was sign of neither Web of Rainbows nor
colossal pillars nor the templed lips that I had seen curving out
beneath the Veil when the Shining One had swirled out to greet its
priestess and its voice and to dance with the sacrifices. There was
but a broken and rent mass of the radiant cliffs against whose base
the lake lapped.

Long I looked--and turned away saddened. Knowing even as I did what
the irised curtain had hidden, still it was as though some thing of
supernal beauty and wonder had been swept away, never to be replaced;
a glamour gone for ever; a work of the high gods destroyed.

"Let's go back," said Larry abruptly.

I dropped a little behind them to examine a bit of carving--and,
after all, they did not want me. I watched them pacing slowly ahead,
his arm around her, black hair close to bronze-gold ringlets. Then I
followed. Half were they over the bridge when through the roar of the
imprisoned stream I heard my name called softly.

"Goodwin! Dr. Goodwin!"

Amazed, I turned. From behind the pedestal of a carved group
slunk--Marakinoff! My premonition had been right. Some way he had
escaped, slipped through to here. He held his hands high, came forward
cautiously.

"I am finished," he whispered--"Done! I don't care what _they'll_ do
to me." He nodded toward the handmaiden and Larry, now at the end of
the bridge and passing on, oblivious of all save each other. He drew
closer. His eyes were sunken, burning, mad; his face etched with deep
lines, as though a graver's tool had cut down through it. I took a
step backward.

A grin, like the grimace of a fiend, blasted the Russian's visage.
He threw himself upon me, his hands clenching at my throat!

"Larry!" I yelled--and as I spun around under the shock of his
onslaught, saw the two turn, stand paralyzed, then race toward me.

"But _you'll_ carry nothing out of here!" shrieked Marakinoff. "No!"

My foot, darting out behind me, touched vacancy. The roaring of the
racing stream deafened me. I felt its mists about me; thr