s; where the
fourth wall was tapestry-draped there was no sign of an opening;
neither floor nor ceiling, places offering no detail but blurred with
vague shadows, showed him what he sought.

"Watch closely!" said Zoraida.

Again it was the small room of the steel cage. The savage-looking man
in the short tunic was there again. He looked watchful, tense, not
altogether at his ease. In one hand was a heavy whip; in the other a
pistol. Kendric thought of the animal trainers he had seen at
circuses. The man's eyes were on the door through which he had come.
So vivid were old images bred now of associations of ideas that Kendric
had no doubt of what small head with fierce eyes would appear next; he
could prevision the lithe puma, in its quick nervous movements, the
lashing of the heavy tail and the glint of the teeth. And so when he
saw what it was that entered, he sat back for a moment limp and the
next sprang to his feet. It was Betty.

Betty clothed strangely and with a face dead white, with eyes to haunt
a man. She wore a loose red robe, sleeveless, falling no lower than
her ankles; her bare feet were in sandals. Her hair was down; about
her brows was a black band that might have been ebony or velvet; into
it was thrust a large white flower.

Betty was speaking. Kendric had dropped back into his chair, having
lost sight of her when he stood. He saw that she was speaking swiftly,
supplicatingly; her hands were clasped; all this he could see but no
slightest sound came to him. He could not tell if she were near or
far. He began to realize the exquisite torture which Zoraida might
offer a man through her mirrors.

He saw the squat brute's wide grin that was as hideous as the puma's
could be; all of the teeth he saw and they were glistening and sharp,
unusually sharp for a human being. And then he saw Betty pushed
forward though she shrank back at first with dragging feet and though
then, suddenly galvanized, she fought wildly. But two big hands locked
tight on her arms and as powerless as a child of six she was thrust
into the steel cage, the door snapped after her. She stood looking
wildly about her; her lips opened as she must have screamed; she
dropped her face into her hands. Kendric saw the white flower fall.

Again the man looked to the door through which he and then Betty had
entered. And now came the puma. It ran in, snarling; it was looking
back over its shoulder as though someone had whip