(Note by M. Leroux.)]

Then I added:

"Now, leave me, little one. I want to be alone."

It seemed as if she would never go. I was touched, but at the same
time vexed. I felt a great need of withdrawing into myself.

"My room is above yours," she said. "There is a copper gong on the
table here. You have only to strike if you want anything. A white
Targa will answer."

For a second, these instructions amused me. I was in a hotel in the
midst of the Sahara. I had only to ring for service.

I looked about my room. My room! For how long?

It was fairly large. Cushions, a couch, an alcove cut into the rock,
all lighted by a great window covered by a matting shade.

I went to the window and raised the shade. The light of the setting
sun entered.

I leaned my elbows on the rocky sill. Inexpressible emotion filled my
heart. The window faced south. It was about two hundred feet above the
ground. The black, polished volcanic wall yawned dizzily below me.

In front of me, perhaps a mile and a half away, was another wall, the
first enclosure mentioned in the Critias. And beyond it in the
distance, I saw the limitless red desert.

XII

MORHANGE DISAPPEARS

My fatigue was so great that I lay as if unconscious until the next
day. I awoke about three o'clock in the afternoon.

I thought at once of the events of the previous day; they seemed
amazing.

"Let me see," I said to myself. "Let us work this out. I must begin by
consulting Morhange."

I was ravenously hungry.

The gong which Tanit-Zerga had pointed out lay within arm's reach. I
struck it. A white Targa appeared.

"Show me the way to the library," I ordered.

He obeyed. As we wound our way through the labyrinth of stairs and
corridors I realized that I could never have found my way without his
help.

Morhange was in the library, intently reading a manuscript.

"A lost treatise of Saint Optat," he said. "Oh, if only Dom Granger
were here. See, it is written in semi-uncial characters."

I did not reply. My eyes were fixed on an object which lay on the
table beside the manuscript. It was an orichalch ring, exactly like
that which Antinea had given me the previous day and the one which she
herself wore.

Morhange smiled.

"Well?" I said.

"Well?"

"You have seen her?"

"I have indeed," Morhange replied.

"She is beautiful, is she not?"

"It would be difficult to dispute that," my comrade answered. "I even
believe that I can say that