silken folds hung graceful and loose. He
felt that she was there, exactly at that spot.

He strode across the room and laid a sudden hand on the fabric. It
parted readily and just behind it, her eyes more brilliant, more
triumphant than he had ever seen them, stood Zoraida.

"Can you say now, Senor Americano," she cried out, the music of her
voice rising and vibrating, "that I have not set the spell of my spirit
upon your spirit, the influence of my mind upon your mind? You stood
here and the chamber was empty about you. I came, but so that you
might not hear with your ears and might not see with your eyes. And
yet, looking at you through a pin hole in a drawn curtain, I made you
conscious of me and called voicelessly to you to come and you came!"

There was laughter in her oblique eyes and upon her scarlet lips, and
Kendric knew that it was not merely light mirth but the deeper laughter
of a conqueror, a high rejoicing, the winged joy of victory.

"I am no student of mental forces," said Kendric. "But to my knowledge
there is nothing unusual in one's feeling the presence of another. As
for any power which your mind can exert over mine, I don't admit it.
It's absurd."

Contempt hardened the line of her mouth and the laughter died in her
eyes.

"Man is an animal of little wisdom," she murmured as she passed by him
into the room, "because he has not learned to believe the simple truth."

"If there is anything either simple or true in your establishment," he
blurted out, "I haven't found it."

She went to the table before she turned. A flowing garment of deep
blue fell about her; on her black hair like a coronet was a crest of
many colored, tiny feathers, feathers of humming birds, he learned
later; throat and arms were bare save for many blazing red and green
stones, feet bare save for exquisitely wrought sandals which were held
in place by little golden straps which ended in plain gold bands about
the round white ankles.

Slowly she turned and faced him. But not yet did she speak. She
clapped her hands together and the curtains at her right bellied out,
parted and a man stepped before her, bending deeply in genuflection.
No Yaqui, this time; no Mexican as Kendric knew Mexicans. The man was
short, but a few inches over five feet, and remarkably heavy-muscled,
the greater part of the body showing since his simple cotton tunic was
wide open across the deep chest, and left arms and legs bare. The
fore