e a sword between his hands, shining and unafraid.

"Give me the talisman. Let me see!"

He answered furiously, "You are mad. As mad as Otar." And he kissed her,
in a rage, in a panic lest all that beauty be destroyed--a kiss as
brutal as a blow, that left him shaken.

* * * * *

She backed away slowly, one step, and he thought she would have killed
him. He said heavily:

"If you will see, you will. The thing is here."

He opened the boss and laid the crystal in her outstretched hand. He did
not meet her eyes.

"Sit down. Hold the flat side against your brow."

She sat, in a great chair of carven wood. Stark noticed that her hand
was unsteady, her face the colour of white ash. He was glad she did not
have the axe where she could reach it. She did not play at anger.

For a long moment she studied the intricate lens, the incredible
depository of a man's mind. Then she raised it slowly to her forehead.

He saw her grow rigid in the chair. How long he watched beside her he
never knew. Seconds, an eternity. He saw her eyes turn blank and
strange, and a shadow came into her face, changing it subtly, altering
the lines, so that it seemed almost a stranger was peering through her
flesh.

All at once, in a voice that was not her own, she cried out terribly,
"_Oh gods of Mars!_"

The talisman dropped rolling to the floor, and Ciara fell forward into
Stark's arms.

He thought at first that she was dead. He carried her to the bed, in an
agony of fear that surprised him with its violence, and laid her down,
and put his hand over her heart.

It was beating strongly. Relief that was almost a sickness swept over
him. He turned, searching vaguely for wine, and saw the talisman. He
picked it up and put it back inside the boss. A jewelled flagon stood on
a table across the room. He took it and started back, and then,
abruptly, there was a wild clamor in the hall outside and Otar was
shouting Ciara's name, pounding on the door.

It was not barred. In another moment they would burst through, and he
knew that they would not stop to enquire what he was doing there.

He dropped the flagon and went out swiftly, the way he had come. The
guard was still unconscious. In the narrow hall beyond, Stark hesitated.
A woman's voice was rising high above the tumult in the main corridor,
and he thought he recognized it.

He went to the tapestry curtain and looked for the second time around
its edge.