perhaps. I can read thought, I can
foretell the future, and I can sometimes make things happen fortunately,
if I try very hard. Such things, very unsubstantial arts, not like your
gun which kills. Subtle things, like making men fall in love with me,
perhaps."

She laughed into my eyes and I got abruptly to my feet. She was telling
the truth in the last sentence, and I did not blame Nokomee for fearing
her power.

"Let us see, then, Carna, what the night can give us. I cannot wait
forever for chance to bring me freedom. Come," I bent and helped her to
her feet, very pleasant and clinging her grasp on my arm, very soft and
utterly smooth the flesh of her arm in my hand, very graceful and lovely
her swift movement to rise. My heart was beating wildly, she was a kind
I understood, but could not resist any the better for knowing. Or was I
unkind, and she but starved for kindness and human sympathy, so long
among a people who disliked and feared her?

We walked along in the darkness, the distant moving lights of that city
closer each step, and a dread in my breast at what I would find there, a
dread that grew. Beside me Carna was silent, her face lovely and glowing
in the night, her step graceful as a deer's.

We circled the high wall of white marble keeping some twenty feet away,
where the grass gave knee-high cover we could drop into instantly. We
came around to the far side from the cliff, and stopped where a paved
highway ran smooth, like pebbled glass, straight across the valley. I
glanced at Carna, she gestured toward the open gate in the wall, and
smiled a daring word.

"In...?"

"In!" I answered, and like two kids, hand in hand, we stole through the
shadowed gateway, sliding quickly out of the light, standing with our
backs to the wall, looking up the long, dim-lit way along which a myriad
dark doorways told of life. But it was seemingly deserted. Carna
whispered softly:

"When it was ours, the night was gay with life and love, now--_it is
death!_"

"Death or taxes, we're going to take a look."

We stole along the shadowed side of the street, the moon was up,
shedding much too bright a light now for comfort. Perhaps a hundred
yards along that strange street we went, I letting the Zoorph lead the
way, for I had an idea she must know the city and have some plan, or she
would not be here. If she meant to use me to escape into my world, I was
all for her.

Then, from ahead, came the sound of feet, many of