rds in the same tongue.

Fiercely he cried something back at the hidden speaker.

A shriek of rage, of frenzy, came out of the darkness. Rita felt that
consciousness was about to leave her again. She swayed forward dizzily,
and a figure which seemed to belong to delirium--a lithe shadow out of
which gleamed a pair of wild eyes--leapt upon her. A knife glittered....

In order to have repelled the attack, Sir Lucien would have had to
release Rita, who was clinging to him, weak and terror-stricken. Instead
he threw himself before her.... She saw the knife enter his shoulder....

Through absolute darkness she sank down into a land of chaotic nightmare
horrors. Great bells clanged maddeningly. Impish hands plucked at her
garments, dragged her hair. She was hurried this way and that, bruised,
torn, and tossed helpless upon a sea of liquid brass. Through vast
avenues lined with yellow, immobile Chinese faces she was borne upon a
bier. Oblique eyes looked into hers. Knives which glittered greenly in
the light of lamps globular and suspended in immeasurable space, were
hurled at her in showers....

Sir Lucien stood before her, supporting her; and all the knives buried
themselves in his body. She tried to cry out, but no sound could she
utter. Darkness fell again....

A Chinaman was bending over her. His hands were tucked in his loose
sleeves. He smiled, and his smile was hideous but friendly. He was
strangely like Sin Sin Wa, save that he did not lack an eye.

Rita found herself lying in an untidy bed in a room laden with opium
fumes and dimly lighted. On a table beside her were the remains of
a meal. She strove to recall having partaken of food, but was
unsuccessful....

There came a blank--then a sharp, stabbing pain in her right arm. She
thought it was the knife, and shrieked wildly again and again....

Years seemingly elapsed, years of agony spent amid oblique eyes which
floated in space unattached to any visible body, amid reeking fumes and
sounds of ceaseless conflict. Once she heard the cry of some bird, and
thought it must be the parakeet which eternally sat on a branch of a
lonely palm in the heart of the Great Sahara.... Then, one night, when
she lay shrinking from the plucking yellow hands which reached out of
the darkness:

"Tell me your dream," boomed a deep, mocking voice; "and I will read its
portent!"

She opened her eyes. She lay in the untidy bed in the room which was
laden with the fumes of opium.