I left the dead girl on the divan and went into the hall. My head ached, and I was still dizzy from my wound, but I had grown suddenly composed, and all my perplexities had vanished in the face of Esther’s imminent need of me.

There was nobody in the hall. The negroes were gone, and the palm gardens were dark and seemed deserted. Silence had descended everywhere. Withal it was the silence of hushed voices, I knew, and not of emptiness. Within those walls, in hidden rooms, lurked those who waited yet for the death agony of the man who had already escaped the baited trap.

I wondered whether Sanson had bought the attendants, if he had come alone, whether the fear of him forbade an ambush in case Amaranth’s plot should fail. He had evidently gone down in the elevator, for it was not in the cage, but it came up to me when I pressed the button, and I descended, stopping at the first door I saw, which must, I knew, give access to the Temple.

The corridor into which I stepped was as empty as the palace hall above. The airscouts who should have been on duty here were gone. I did not realize that I had formed no plans and felt no fear until I found my way unopposed. Before me was a door, leading into one of the numerous small rooms through which one entered the Temple, and at my side was a little window, through which the cries of the mob beneath were borne to me fitfully on the gusty air.

I stopped and looked out. The sky was thick with battleplanes. No longer at their stations about the city, they cruised hither and thither, approaching one another and retiring in a manner seemingly confused and aimless. Sometimes a group would gather as if conferring, forming a polygon of light with changing sides as they maneuvered; and presently a single impulse seemed to animate them all, for, like a flock of wheeling birds, they swung around and sailed off together, till they were only pin-points of light in the southwest.

Beneath me the courts were packed with a vast multitude that had assembled for the morrow’s ceremonies. Looking down on them, I saw that they were held back by two lines of the guards, armed with Ray rods, drawn up before the Temple.

They jostled and swayed and howled fearlessly, as if they knew the imminence of change; yet their cries were not all against the Christians and the morons, nor yet against Lembken, nor all for Sanson. I tried to fancy that among them were groups of our few thousand, gathered out of the forests to play their rÔle at dawn.

Yet for the moment Sanson had triumphed. I thought upon how little hung the fate of the world. A palace women’s intrigue, the jealousy of a girl, a cup of wine, and Lembken’s schemes were broken.

Then it came to me that the conical, glow-painted Ray guns on the encircling wall were trained no longer outward but inward, dominating the Temple courts and all the multitude within them. And in a flash of comprehension I saw the scheme of Sanson. If the people rejected him on the morrow he meant to kill all those within the walls, all human beings inside the circle of the fortress, confident that thereby he would destroy all his enemies. He meant to level the Temple and the palace above, the Council Hall, the Airscouts’ Fortress, involving everything in one colossal ruin which he would bestride—the unchallenged master of the Federation.

This done, the Russian fleet would be attacked and destroyed, and with it the last obstacle to world dominion.

I saw this with one flash of intuition. Perhaps I lingered in all for forty seconds beside the window. It was hardly longer, for the thought of Esther drove me through the doorway in front of me. I found myself within the dark, enormous area of the Temple.

I was in a circular gallery surrounded by a brass railing, which ran high up around the interior. The only light was the faint reflection from a single solar bulb that shone across the gulf. Beneath it I could discern the shining, golden surface of the Ant.

I felt my way around the gallery, working toward the light, which seemed to descend as I approached it, until, standing immediately above it, I looked down and saw it shining an unknown distance beneath. It showed now the uplifted antenna of the idol, the edge of the stone altar in the center of the bridge that spanned the Temple, and the round body of the cylinder, which seemed to hang in space above it.

I had entered the Temple upon a floor one stage too high, and there was no way down from the gallery; it would be necessary to go back to the elevator and descend to a lower level, that of the bridges that spanned the interior court.

But that was too dangerous, and I could wait no longer. I estimated that the light was five and twenty feet below. I swung from the brass rail and dropped into space. It was a mad plunge in the dark toward that slender bridge a hundred feet above the Temple floor. But fortune was with me, for I struck the golden grille around the altar-stone and tumbled inside, rising upon my feet with only a bruise or two.

The grille was about four feet high, and the ends formed gates which, when opened, made the altar-stone one with the two bridge spans that extended to meet it from either side of the building. It formed thus a sort of keystone in aspect, though not architecturally, since it did not support the spans, which seemed to be on the principle of the cantilever. I saw now that the stone was suspended by steel chains from the roof, and over it, hung by two finer ones, was the cylinder.

Presently I could grasp the meaning of the mechanism. Cylinder and stone altar were in counterpoise, so that, when the first was drawn up, the second would descend from between the spans to the level of the Ant’s pedestal, forming, as it were, a sacrificial stone immediately before the idol, disrupting the continuity of the bridges also, and leaving a gap between them.

But I spared no thoughts on this. I looked through the cylinder’s face of glass, and, though I saw but the dimmest outlines there, I knew that I had found Esther again, and that there were to be no more partings, so long as we both lived.

I do not know what follies I committed there, for I forgot everything but her. Forgotten was the imminent danger, remembered only our reunion. I flung my arms about the iron case and called to her, telling her of my love, as if she heard me. I came back to sanity at length to find myself kneeling before the case upon the stone, with the tears raining down my cheeks.

It was a mad wooing of a sleeping woman upon that giant slab, swung by its chains from the vault above, and vibrant under me. Each movement set the heavy mass to trembling as the chains quivered, and the cylinder, too, danced before me, like some steel marionette.

I stretched my hands up, feeling for the cylinder cap. It was still on the neck, but it had almost reached the end of the thread and moved under my fingers. I could not see the figures upon the dial, but I knew that Esther’s awakening was not many hours away.

I twisted the cap between my fingers. I could dislodge it. If I did so ... Lazaroff had told me that would bring death, but surely not when there remained only a few short hours before the awakening. Air must have been entering in measurable quantities during some days. And, even if Esther died—better that than to awaken in Sanson’s arms!

It was a terrific choice. I hesitated only a few moments, but they were a century of agony to me. Then I set my fingers to the cap, wrenched it free, and flung it from me. It tinkled upon the stones beneath. And, hardly venturing to breathe, I clung to the cylinder and waited.

No sound came from within. I clung and tried to place my ear against the opening.

At last, in maddened resolution, I swung the cylinder toward me by the chains, tilting it downward until I got purchase upon it. I bore with my full weight upon the metal edge. I plunged my arms within. I felt the heavy coils of Esther’s hair, her eyelids, cheek, and chin; I placed my hands beneath her arms and drew her forth. How I contrived it I do not know, for platform and cylinder rocked fearfully as they swung; but in a moment, it seemed, I held her light and wasted body against my own. And we were on the rocking altar-stone together, while the cylinder swung rhythmically above, passing our heads in steady, sweeping flights as I crouched with Esther in my arms behind the golden grille.

I pressed my lips to hers, I chafed her hands and pleaded with her to awake. And presently, as if in answer to my prayer, I heard a sigh so faint that I could scarcely dare believe I heard it.

A deeper sigh, a sobbing breath—she lived; and with amazed, awed happiness I felt her thin arms grope instinctively toward my neck. She knew!

I kneeled beside her on the altar-stone, listening with choked sobs and wildly beating heart to the words that came from her lips in faltering whispers:

“Herman! What have you done? You have killed him! Then kill me, too! I don’t want to live! Murderer! Kill me! O Arnold, my love, to think that neither of us knew!”

Then:

“Yes, I love him, Herman, and I have told him so. You were too late to prevent that. I saw your heart tonight. Kill me, I say! Yes, I am ready a thousand times to go where Arnold has gone. Be sure that I shall follow him, through any hell of your devising!”

So Esther whispered, living over again those minutes of dreadful anguish that she must have passed in the cellar after Lazaroff had put the cap on my cylinder and driven me on that strange voyage of mine. The little solar light shone on Esther’s brown gown, turning it golden. And I remembered—with how strange a pang—the night when she had worn that gown in the drawing-room of Sir Spofforth’s house.

“Esther,” I whispered, bending over her, “it is I. It is Arnold.”

I saw her eyelids quiver half open, but I knew that she could not see me. She moaned. I interposed my body between her and the light.

“You have been ill, dearest Esther,” I said. “But now everything is well. You know me, Esther?”

“Arnold,” she whispered, “I have been with you all the time. I dreamed ... Herman had sent you ... a hundred years away.”

She became unconscious the next moment. I knew the mighty grip of that first sleep. It was in truth twin brother to death, for, with my head against her breast, I could discern hardly the slightest stirring. But she lived; all was well. And now the need of saving her came over me. I caught her into my arms—she weighed no more than a small child—and hurried across the bridge. I believed that the outer door upon this lower level communicated with the bridge over the interior court that led to the Airscouts’ Fortress.

I traversed the little room and pushed the swing door open. Before me was an elevator shaft, evidently that up which I had made my first journey to Lembken’s palace. But as I emerged into the corridor I saw, not ten paces away, their backs toward me, two of the Guard.

I was too late. The Guard had occupied the posts vacated by the airscouts. The Temple and all the approaches to Lembken’s palace were in Sanson’s hands.

They had not seen or heard me, and in a moment I had withdrawn within the little room. There still remained one chance. By crossing the bridge again and passing through the priests’ robing-room on the other side of the Temple, I could reach all parts of the buildings. Perhaps there were no sentries in the gallery above the auditorium. I knew how vain the hope was, but there was none other.

I carried Esther upon the bridge again. As I was about to set foot upon the altar-stone, which still rocked slightly, I fancied that the bridges themselves were moving. I leaped on the stone, stumbling against the grille. One moment I hesitated, to assure myself that Esther still breathed. A piece of her brown dress had come away and broke like burned paper in my hand. I raised her higher in my arms, so that her head rested against my shoulder, and opened the grille gate to step upon the farther span.

That moment of delay had ended all my hopes. There was no second span. For swiftly, noiselessly, the span was swinging away from me, pivoting upon its further end. It was already too far away for me to make the leap, encumbered as I was with Esther. I glanced backward in horror. The span that I had crossed was moving also, acting in unison. They vanished in the gloom at the sides of the Temple.

I stood with Esther in my arms upon the altar-slab, poised on that unsteady resting place high in the Temple void. There was no refuge anywhere. Over me was the vault; far underneath the Ant with its gleaming, upraised tentacle.

As I stood there the little solar light went out.