ou I weep, and if only your life could be spared to
fulfil itself in happiness in the land that bore you, oh! for you I
would gladly die."

Now Oliver, who seemed deeply moved, stepped to her and began to whisper
into her ear, evidently making some proposal of which I think I can
guess the nature. She listened to him, smiling sadly, and made a motion
with her hand as though to thrust him away.

"Not so," she said, "it is nobly offered, but did I accept, through
whatever universes I may wander, those who came after me would know me
by my trail of blood, the blood of him who loved me. Perhaps, too, by
that crime I should be separated from you for ever. Moreover, I tell
you that though all seems black as this thick darkness, I believe that
things will yet end well for you and me--in this world or another."

Then she was gone, leaving Orme staring after her like a man in a
trance.

"I daresay they will," remarked Higgs _sotto voce_ to me, "and that's
first-rate so far as they are concerned. But what I should jolly well
like to know is how they are going to end for _us_ who haven't got a
charming lady to see us across the Styx."

"You needn't puzzle your brain over that," I answered gloomily, "for
I think there will soon be a few more skeletons in this beastly cave,
that's all. Don't you see that those Abati will believe we are burned in
the palace?"

CHAPTER XIX

STARVATION

I was right. The Abati did think that we had been burned. It never
occurred to them that we might have escaped to the underground city.
So at least I judged from the fact that they made no attempt to seek
us there until they learned the truth in the fashion that I am about to
describe. If anything, this safety from our enemies added to the trials
of those hideous days and nights. Had there been assaults to repel and
the excitement of striving against overwhelming odds, at any rate we
should have found occupation for our minds and remaining energies.

But there were none. By turns we listened at the mouth of the passage
for the echo of footsteps that never came. Nothing came to break a
silence so intense that at last our ears, craving for sound, magnified
the soft flitter of the bats into a noise as of eagle's wings, till
at last we spoke in whispers, because the full voice of man seemed to
affront the solemn quietude, seemed intolerable to our nerves.

Yet for the first day or two we found occupation of a sort. Of course
our first need