e black one, who had spoken. He
saw her face lose its color and go dead white, and plainly her wide
eyes showed the fears that swept in upon her with returning
remembrance.

* * * * *

Garry followed her gaze to the wild figure whose slitted eyes
glittered in savage triumph and possessiveness at the white beauty of
the trembling girl. The lean figure spoke again in that rasping,
unintelligible voice--he addressed the girl now--and the tone sent a
strange prickling of animosity through every fibre of the watching
man.

The black one took one stride forward; the girl, in a flash of white
and gold, sprang from her resting place to take shelter behind the
high casket. Her eyes came back to Garry's, and the call for help
though voiceless was none the less real.

Then her pale lips moved, and she called to him with a clear voice
that uttered unknown words.

Garry came from the spell that bound him, and with a quick rush made
between her and the advancing man. He landed tense and crouching, and
his voice was hoarse with excitement when he spoke.

"That'll be all from you," he told the black one.

His words could mean nothing to this savage, but the tone that rang
through them, and his crouching, ready pose, must have been plain. The
inky face beneath the high-pointed dome of head was twisted with rage;
the eyes glared at this being who dared to oppose him. But the black
one paused, then stepped backward to the casket where he had been.

Garry retreated a few slow steps to the end of the metal box that
sheltered the girl. "Can't you understand me?" he asked. "Am I
dreaming? What has happened? Who are you, and who is this black beast?
What does it all mean?"

Again he was sure that mere speech useless, but he felt that he had to
speak, to say something, anything, to prove the reality of his own
waking self and of the wild, nightmare experience.

He saw the crouching girl rise to her full height; he saw the movement
of her hand as she swept the dark hair away from her face, and the
film of gold lace clung closely about her as she came to his side.
One hand was outstretched to rest, light and cool, upon his forehead.

* * * * *

He heard her voice, so soft and liquid yet so charged with terror. She
spoke meaningless words and phrases, but at the touch of her hand upon
his face he started abruptly.

Did the words themselves take on meaning and coherence,