e tried to restore her to consciousness,
but dared not put her from him for an instant. On he ran, and presently
reached a flight of stairs which he thought led to his chambers. He
descended them, and was hastening along a narrow corridor on the floor
beneath when Bernardino opened her eyes. She asked to be released from
his arms. He put her down, but supported her along the corridor.

"We have lost our way," he said, as he discovered that the corridor,
instead of leading to his chambers, turned off obliquely in another
direction.

"Let's go on anyway," she suggested; "it may lead us out. I have never
been here before. I--" A great crash drowned her words. The floor
quivered and swayed, but it did not fall. On they ran through the
darkness, till Thorndyke felt a heavy curtain before. He paused
abruptly, not knowing what to do. Bernardino felt of its texture,
perplexed for an instant.

"Draw it aside, it seems to hang across the corridor," she said. He
obeyed her, and only a few yards further on they saw another curtain
with bars of light above and below it. They drew this aside, and found
themselves on the threshold of a most beautiful apartment.

In the mosaic floor were pictures cut in colored stones, and the ceiling
was a silken canopy as filmy and as delicately blue as the sky on a
summer's night. The floor was strewn with richly embroidered pillows,
couches, rugs and ottomans; and here and there were palm trees and beds
of flowers and grottoes. A solitary light, representing the moon, showed
through the silken canopy in whose folds little lights sparkled like
far-off stars.

Thorndyke looked at the princess inquiringly. She was bewildered.

"I have no idea where we are," she murmured. "I am sure I have never
been here before; but there is another apartment beyond. Listen! I hear
cries."

"Some one in distress," he answered, and he drew her across the room and
through a door into another room more beautiful than the one they had
just left. Here, huddled together at a window overlooking the court,
were six or eight beautiful young women. They were staring out into the
darkness, and moaning and muttering low cries of despair.

"It is my father's ladies," ejaculated the princess aghast. "He would
be angry if he knew we had come here. No one but himself enters these
apartments."

Just then one of the women turned a lovely and despairing face toward
them, and came forward and knelt at the feet of Bernardino.