rgot. I should go out
an unknown man from the little cell of a temple, I should do my work,
and then, whether I took freedom with me, or whether I came down at last
myself on a pile of slain, these people would guess without being told
the name, that here was Deucalion. Gods! what a fight we would have
made!

But the door did not open wide to give me space for my first rush. It
creaked gratingly outwards on its pivots, and a slim hand and a white
arm slipped inside, beckoning me to quietude. Here was some woman. The
door creaked wider, and she came inside.

"Nais," I said.

"Silence, or they will hear you, and remember. At present those who
brought you here are killed, and unless by chance some one blunders into
this robbed shrine, you will not be found."

"Then, if that is so, let me go out and walk amongst these people as one
of themselves."

She shook her head.

"But, Nais, I am not known here. I am merely a man in very plain and
mud-stained robe. I should be in no ways remarkable."

A smile twitched her face. "My lord," she said, "wears no beard; and his
is the only clean chin in the camp."

I joined in her laugh. "A pest on my want of foppishness then. But I am
forgetting somewhat. It comes to my mind that we still have unfinished
that small discussion of ours concerning the length of my poor life.
Have you decided to cut it off from risk of further mischief, or do you
propose to give me further span?"

She turned to me with a look of sharp distress. "My lord," she said,
"I would have you forget that silly talk of mine. This last two hours I
thought you were dead in real truth."

"And you were not relieved?"

"I felt that the only man was gone out of the world--I mean, my lord,
the only man who can save Atlantis."

"Your words give me a confidence. Then you would have me go back and
become husband to Phorenice?"

"If there is no other way."

"I warn you I shall do that, if she still so desires it, and if it seems
to me that that course will be best. This is no hour for private likings
or dislikings."

"I know it," she said, "I feel it. I have no heart now, save only for
Atlantis. I have schooled myself once more to that."

"And at present I am in this lone little box of a temple. A minute
ago, before you came, I had promised myself a pretty enough fight to
signalise my changing of abode."

"There must be nothing of that. I will not have these poor people
slaughtered unnecessarily. Nor do I w