I stepped out of the elevator into a part of the Palace that I had not seen before. The room into which the waiting negro ushered me was completely dark, though a thin line of light at the further end showed me that there was a lighted room beyond.

I strained my eyes, striving to penetrate the gloom. I took a few steps forward, stretching out my hands to feel if any obstacle were in the way. Looking back, I could not even discern the heavy curtain that had dropped soundlessly behind me.

I knew that there was someone in the room, and that it was not Lembken. I waited; I heard the rustle of a woman’s garment. Then swiftly the room was flooded with the soft solar light.

It was bare, except for the rugs and a low divan pushed against one wall, with a little table beside it. Everything was of the color of gold: the walls, the ceiling, the rugs upon the floor. And before me, clothed from head to foot in a sheer, trailing garment of dull gold, stood the girl Amaranth.

Her dark hair was bound back in a loose Grecian knot, her sandaled feet gleamed white on the gold fabric under them; she stretched out her white arms to me and, taking me by the hand, led me to the divan and placed me at her side.

“Poor Arnold!” she began in a caressing tone, “you have suffered so much in your ignorance and your desire to help your friends. But all your troubles are ended now, and your friends shall not be harmed. Do you think you can love me, Arnold?”

She looked at me with neither boldness nor hesitation, and then, folding her arms, drummed her sandal heels against the foot of the divan.

“Are you not lucky, Arnold, to have won my love!” she continued. “I gave my love to you from the moment when I first saw you enter the room in which I sat with Lembken, looking so stern, so resolute, like one of those adventurous heroes of the twentieth century of whom we read in our romances. That is why I made Lembken tell Mehemet to bring you here. He was so hurt by your departure that I think he would have let his plans go to ruin rather than himself plead with you. He is very sensitive and kind.

“You are not afraid to love me, Arnold?” she continued, looking at me with curious scrutiny. “You need not be afraid. Lembken has grown tired of me, so I must find another. He has taken a fancy to Coral, my blue, an absurd little yellow-haired thing. You shall see her.”

She clapped her hands twice, and a door opened, apparently a part of the wall. A fair-haired girl, dressed in a loose blue tunic and Zouave trousers, entered, carrying a tray on which were two golden winecups.

Amaranth took the nearest cup in her hands, touched the rim with her lips, and held it out to me.

“Drink with me, Arnold,” she said.

But I would not drink, lest the corruption of the wine should dull me and disarm my strength in the spell of that enervating hell. I handed back the cup to her.

Amaranth looked at me for an instant with quivering lips. Then she burst into tears and hurled the cup at the maid. She flung the other also. The first missed its mark and fell against the base of the wall, where it shed its ruby contents in a widening stain. The second cup struck the maid’s cheek and cut it, and the wine drenched the blue tunic.

The maid smiled, biting her lips, stooped down, picked up both cups, and, placing them on the tray, departed silently. Amaranth sobbed as if her heart was broken. Then suddenly she turned and flung her arms about me.

“Arnold, I love you!” she cried. “You saw her? She is Lembken’s favorite now, that yellow-haired fool with the blue eyes like saucers. Lembken means us for each other. Can you not love me?”

I sat in silence, trying to pick my path cautiously through the mists of bewildering doubt. Amaranth unclasped her arms from about my neck, and her face assumed a look of mockery.

“Oh, I know!” she said, “it is that Elizabeth of yours whom you think you love. And you think you can only love one at a time, in your romantic twentieth-century way. Well, I will match myself against her. You shall bring her here, Arnold, and I will fight her for you, and I will be your blue and she shall be your white, and I will serve you obediently till I have won your heart. Look on me, Arnold! See how beautiful I am! For I was born here; I am Boss Rose’s daughter, and I have never left the People’s House. Look at the whiteness of my skin! The sun has never shone on it. Look at my lips, Arnold! Put your mouth to my cheek—it is as soft as the bloom upon a nectarine. Do you think, then, I am afraid to match myself against your Elizabeth?”

She smiled contemptuously, and tilted back her head, and clasped her hands behind it, and watched me through her lashes. Yet I detected a resource of feverish resolve in her; and I knew that she and I, Mehemet, Sanson, were that night weaving the threads in a fabric upon the loom of destiny, and that each word we spoke flashed like the thread-bearing shuttle over it.

So, piecing my words together with infinite care, because the lives of Esther and all those who were dear to me hung on them, I answered her:

“Forgive my sullen mood. You have promised that my friends shall go free; yet they expect to die at sunrise, and it is hard to be at ease. How can I save them?”

Amaranth unclasped her hands and turned to me with a quick gesture of penitence.

“Ah, it was wrong of me to speak of love first, when you have such a burden of sorrow, Arnold!” she answered. “I had forgotten that men’s minds are troubled in the world below. Here we are free and have no cares, except how we shall take our pleasures. And to think that you left us to help your friends, when Lembken would have done everything you wished!

“Now I will set your mind at rest. Lembken has already given the command that your friends shall live until Sanson has spoken in the Temple, and when he has spoken he will no longer have power—if you obey Lembken. But he was deeply hurt by your leaving him, for he is very sensitive to unkindness, and so he asked me to speak to you on his behalf. Now, if you act loyally, you may save your friends and the world. Tomorrow there will be an end to all of Sanson’s mad schemes of tyranny. Mehemet and his guards have abandoned him. Lembken knows everything; he knows all the desperate plans his poor people have made, and his heart is wrung for them.”

She paused, and placing her hand on mine, looked very earnestly at me.

“Arnold, you know that Sanson has been poisoning the people’s minds against Lembken, in pursuance of his plan to depose him,” she continued. “So your part, which will be detailed to you later, will be to enter the Temple tomorrow among the priests. You will defend Lembken against Sanson. You will remind the people how they elected him from year to year, because he was their friend. Tell them he has not changed. And in return liberty shall be established and the hated Guard disbanded. Lembken asks only for his dignity and wealth, and his friends in the People’s House. He is growing old, Arnold, and desires power no more.”

She watched me with that centuries-old look, and in my heart I knew I had not fathomed hers. This was what I had meant to propose. Yet—yet I doubted her.

“It is agreed, then,” she cried gaily, “and now you will be one of us. It is past midnight, Arnold, and in a few short hours you shall be hidden in the priests’ room to be coached for your part. Till then—”

She ceased suddenly, as the sound of voices came from the room beyond the further door. She slipped from the divan.

“Sanson has been with Lembken,” she whispered. “He is coming this way. Arnold, do you want to see your enemy broken? That will be a glorious beginning to this first night of ours, and afterwards we shall go to the revels in the garden. I shall be proud of you, Arnold, for now the girls are taunting me because Lembken is tired of me. How I shall be envied! But come here quickly!”

She took me to the door in the wall through which the girl Coral had come. At a distance of a few paces it was invisible. I wondered how many more such doors were set in the walls of Lembken’s palace.

“You shall listen here,” she said, “I trust you Arnold. You will not lose your self-control and enter, no matter what you hear? Ah, I shall test your love for that Elizabeth! But I trust you, and the beginning of this night’s masque shall be the humbling of your enemy. Stay here until I call you!”

She thrust me behind the door and withdrew, closing it. I heard the rustle of her garment as she crossed the room—then nothing.

I found myself standing in a dim corridor that ran as far as I could see in either direction. The nameless horror of the Palace overcame me, and it was with a strong effort that I controlled my wild impulse of flight.

As I stood there I heard the sound of stealthy footsteps, and, looking up, saw the maid Coral coming softly toward me. She was carrying the tray, with two full winecups, and she stopped beside me and set it down on the carpet.

She stood looking at me. Her eyes were blazing with anger, and her slim body shook under the blue tunic. But on her mouth was the same set smile that I had seen when she picked up the cups.

She said nothing, but, placing her hand against the door, opened it an inch or two without the slightest sound. At that moment I heard a door opened, the rustle of Amaranth’s robe, and a lithe tread on the floor.

Sanson spoke. “I have said all that there is to say,” he answered. “Why do you plead with me? Do you think a woman can plead with me where Lembken failed? He shall have his honors and residence here—no more.”

“But spare your prisoners, Sanson,” said Amaranth softly. “Spare Arnold. For my sake,” she said, pleading.

Sanson spoke curtly. “All Christians and all morons must be tomorrow’s sacrifice to the new era,” he answered.

“Do not go, Sanson,” Amaranth besought him, as he moved away from her. “Listen to me! You, who are so merciless and cruel, why do you not take all?”

“I have all that I need,” he said impatiently. “What more?”

“Why have you spared Lembken? Why do you not slay him and rule with us? We hate him. He is a tyrant, and you know the fate of his women when they have ceased to please. You who have made yourself the master of the world, for whose sight we throng the sides of the crystal walls as you cross the courts below—why have you refused the pleasures that are for the world’s masters?”

He stood still; I fancied that he was looking at her, trying to measure his problem in the balances once more. Coral cast a glance at me. The smile was still on her face, but she nodded her head thoughtfully, as if she, too, had her problem.

“Listen, Sanson,” continued Amaranth fiercely, “when Boss Rose climbed to power he built the People’s House and made it a pleasure-palace for the world’s elect. Then he died under a murderer’s dagger, and Lembken, who had long envied him, came to rule in his place. He, too, has lived his time. Now he is broken. You, the next ruler of the world—why do you not do as he did? We are tired of him. We want another lord, Sanson.”

I knew that she was clinging to him as she had clung to me. I did not look at Coral, but I knew that she was still smiling.

“You can set us free, Sanson,” continued Amaranth gently. “You can rid us of our tyrant.”

The murmuring voice went on and on, and Sanson made no answer.

“You have not entered the People’s House for seven years until tonight. Do you think we have forgotten that you exist? Do you think we have not wondered why the master of the world has left us to the whims of that fat old man? Sit by me, Sanson. Do you not see how you have toiled while Lembken has taken his ease? You have waited so long for one woman. Oh, yes, I know; all a great man’s secrets are known everywhere, though he thinks them in sanctuary, securely guarded. You can take her—but take us too. Live your life, Sanson! Save us and reign over us! Take me, Sanson—”

I heard the man breathe as if in a trance. That strange pity which he inspired in me awoke again. All the long tragedy of his life, the vigil of five and thirty years, the love that must prove vain—I realized it all. For this vain love he had ensnared the world, and now the world leaped at him to ensnare him. Devil as he was, in will his life had been, in one respect, a hero’s.

“Drink with me, Sanson,” I heard Amaranth murmur. “You do not know the taste of wine. A pledge to our love. A pledge to our lives!”

She was conquering. The tyrant of the world was almost prostrate at the feet of this girl of twenty years. Attila’s fate was to be his. I heard him groan in bitterness of conflict.

Amaranth clapped twice. Instantly the girl Coral stooped down, pushing me fiercely from the door, and, taking up the tray, went in. Amaranth took the brimming winecup and touched it with her lips.

“Drink, Sanson!” she murmured.

I was watching them now. I saw Sanson rise and raise the cup in his hand. He did not drink, neither did he reject it, but stood like one in a daze, all movement inhibited by the fierceness of that inner struggle. Amaranth seized the second cup from the tray, leaped from the couch, and raised it on high.

“To our love, Sanson!” she cried, and drained it.

At that moment the jagged cut on the girl Coral’s face grew red with blood again.

Coral stood holding the tray, and she looked at Amaranth and smiled. She stood like a tinted statue.

Sanson was still standing in front of the divan. He had not drunk; he held the cup in his hand and was himself as immobile as a statue.

“Will you not drink the pledge that I have drunk?” asked Amaranth, laying her fingers lightly on his arm and leaning toward him.

And I had underestimated Sanson after all. Now, at the moment of surrender, his indomitable will flamed out, seeming to possess his body and mold each feature, every muscle to its unconquerable resolve.

“I will not drink!” he cried, and flung the cup to the floor.

He turned and strode from the room like the conqueror he was. He passed the curtain, which fell behind him. He had won his hardest battle, taken unaware, fighting against a cunning ambush; and I knew now that hardly an earthly enemy could conquer him.

I was in the room now, for there was no need to hide myself any longer. I watched Amaranth, who, as statuesque as Sanson had been, stood looking after him. A minute passed.

Suddenly she wheeled about and clapped her hands to her side. She staggered; a spasm of pain crossed her face, and she looked searchingly at Coral. The maid in the blue tunic looked back at her, smiling.

Their eyes did not waver until Amaranth swayed backward and fell on the divan. A scream broke from her lips, and then another; a third; she wrung her hands and moaned.

I kneeled before her. “What is it, Amaranth?” I cried.

She raised herself and looked wildly at me. Her face was ashen pale, the features pinched; dark rings had crept beneath her eyes.

“She gave me the—wrong cup,” she whispered.

I tried to go for aid, but Amaranth clung to me. “There is no hope,” she sobbed. “I must die. Stay with me, Arnold!”

Her head fell back and she breathed heavily. I turned and saw Coral beside me, a smiling, waxen doll, the new queen of the harem by the dying one.

“Go!” I thundered at her.

She shrugged her shoulders daintily and went, leaving the winecups on the floor.

Amaranth’s hand trembled upon my sleeve. I bent over her. Her eyes fixed themselves on mine.

“Put your hand under me,” she muttered; “raise me. All is lost now. Sanson has beaten Lembken, and everything is ended. Save your Elizabeth if you can.”

She drew my face toward hers and spoke in panting accents:

“It was Lembken’s plot. He learned that Sanson held you in the vaults. His case was desperate. He asked Mehemet’s aid. Mehemet said he—his men would not desert Sanson while he lived, but if he died they would follow him for Lembken. I was to poison Sanson and thus win over the Guard. I was to drug you only, and keep you out of the way. Lembken liked you; he would not let you be killed. He has been communicating with the American bosses. The plan—the plan—”

She gathered her strength with a last effort of will.

“The plan was of long standing. Events hastened it. Mehemet knew it. Britain was to have a God again, Mehemet’s God, and the American Mormons were to unite with us, for their faith is nearly the same. The people would have a god, and this would unite all nations against the Christian Russians. They are in Stockholm. The American battleplanes are on their way to help us against them. When Sanson was dead the guards were to join the airscouts. Now you must go. Save your Elizabeth. Kill Sanson. I can say no more. Escape—”

She muttered something that I could not hear, and then her eyes, which had closed, reopened and wavered on mine again.

“I loved you, Arnold,” she said in a weak, clear voice. “I’m glad I died before I lost you. I used to wish I had been born in other days ... the twentieth-century days, when ... women were different ... all different ... men mated one only ... give the people those days again if you beat Sanson, Arnold.”

She tried to stretch out her hands to me. Her eyelids quivered, and she sighed very deeply.

I saw a crimson stain upon my hands. It was the wine from Sanson’s winecup.