ng she
might die ere we reached the end of our journey, I went to her in the
night, and laid my bare arm upon her lips. She bit into it so fiercely
that I cried out. How I got away from her I do not know, but I came to
myself lying beyond her reach. It was then morning, and immediately I
set about our departure.

Choosing twelve Little Ones, not of the biggest and strongest, but of
the sweetest and merriest, I mounted them on six elephants, and took
two more of the wise CLUMSIES, as the children called them, to bear the
princess. I still rode Lona's horse, and carried her body wrapt in
her cloak before me. As nearly as I could judge I took the direct way,
across the left branch of the river-bed, to the House of Bitterness,
where I hoped to learn how best to cross the broader and rougher branch,
and how to avoid the basin of monsters: I dreaded the former for the
elephants, the latter for the children.

I had one terrible night on the way--the third, passed in the desert
between the two branches of the dead river.

We had stopped the elephants in a sheltered place, and there let the
princess slip down between them, to lie on the sand until the morning.
She seemed quite dead, but I did not think she was. I laid myself a
little way from her, with the body of Lona by my other side, thus
to keep watch at once over the dead and the dangerous. The moon was
half-way down the west, a pale, thoughtful moon, mottling the desert
with shadows. Of a sudden she was eclipsed, remaining visible, but
sending forth no light: a thick, diaphanous film covered her patient
beauty, and she looked troubled. The film swept a little aside, and
I saw the edge of it against her clearness--the jagged outline of
a bat-like wing, torn and hooked. Came a cold wind with a burning
sting--and Lilith was upon me. Her hands were still bound, but with her
teeth she pulled from my shoulder the cloak Lona made for me, and fixed
them in my flesh. I lay as one paralysed.

Already the very life seemed flowing from me into her, when I
remembered, and struck her on the hand. She raised her head with a
gurgling shriek, and I felt her shiver. I flung her from me, and sprang
to my feet.

She was on her knees, and rocked herself to and fro. A second blast of
hot-stinging cold enveloped us; the moon shone out clear, and I saw her
face--gaunt and ghastly, besmeared with red.

"Down, devil!" I cried.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, with the voice of a dull