As soon as she reËntered the palace, Sajipona dismissed her courtiers, the cavemen who acted as guards, and even the few female attendants she was accustomed to have near her. Of her own people, Narva alone remained.

Facing Raoul and Una in the deserted hall, flooded with light from the magic sun that a short while since had traced in moving characters of fire the approach of her enemies, Sajipona told of her purpose in bringing them there. She spoke as if she had long foreseen and even planned this interview, and amazed them by her intimate knowledge of various matters that seemed quite beyond the reach of her sources of information. It was as if she had been thoroughly familiar for some years past with Raoul’s schemes, and had even shared in the hopes and fears that brought Una to Colombia.

“I knew of your coming; I planned for it,” she said to Raoul. “For months I have known that you were using every art your cunning could suggest—aided by the treachery of one of my own people—to find your way here. Until now you have been unable to do anything. I was always able to keep you out of here—and I could still have kept you out, had it not served my purpose better to let you come. You are here now—you are looking for what you have always looked. You guessed, long since, of the existence of a great treasure house, built here centuries ago by the rulers of our mountain kingdom who disappeared before the white invaders of this country. Idle stories and legends of those far off times, repeated to you by the peons whom you questioned, vague hints and romances picked up from ancient books, led you to this cave and to the belief that I was, in some way, mixed up with its secret. I will not say that you were right or wrong in all of this. Here you look for a mountain of treasure; as yet you have found none. But you have seen marvels enough since you entered this unknown region to make you eager to solve a mystery that every moment has grown deeper. I will help you—but it must be in my own way, and just so far as it suits my own plans.

“Once, we who live here now shut out from all the rest of the world, were free. We overran all the plains and mountains of Bogota, our rule extended to the warmer countries on every side of us. We practiced arts, cultivated sciences, were familiar with secrets of nature that our conquerors were too rude, too ignorant to understand. But these conquerors excelled us in warfare; and so we were driven either into slavery or hiding. It is in memory of that former age of freedom and empire that my people have called this the Land of the Condor—that, and a strange old legend that you may have heard of. Here we are hidden far, as you know, from the light of the upper earth. A miracle of nature carved this land out of the rock; the science and art of a race older than yours have furnished it and made it what you see. It is guarded, as you know to your cost, by many a labyrinth, strongholds that have baffled you every time you have tried to pierce them. Its people live by means and methods that are forgotten—if they were ever known—to the outer world. Here we have been free to follow the customs and beliefs of our fathers. Here we could still continue a peaceful mode of life you know nothing of. But something has happened that has changed all this. Because of it I have at last permitted, even aided your coming to us. I know all you have sacrificed for this treasure you hope to win from the depths of the earth—treasure that belongs to us. I will not say that your search will be rewarded. Had you succeeded in your plan years ago you would have paid dearly for it. The knowledge of this hidden land would have been forever lost to you. Good fortune—or ill—has brought you here at last. Your fate lies now in the hands of the man you once tried to injure. But there is one thing you must do before his decision can be given. You must free him from a tyranny that, with all our knowledge of mankind’s perils and weaknesses, we are powerless to overcome.”

The demand, vague though it was, did not surprise Raoul. Upon learning of David’s disappearance on the road from Honda to Bogota, he guessed that the missing man had found his way, by some inexplicable method, to this subterranean world, thus repeating his almost fatal adventure of three years ago. This surmise, based on the past, and on indications of similar abnormal mental symptoms that he believed David had again experienced, was corroborated by the cavemen who accompanied him to the palace. From these cavemen he learned that David had been followed by Sajipona’s emissaries ever since his arrival in Honda. These people intended neither his capture, nor to interfere with whatever plans he might have. Instead, they had formed a sort of secret guard, instructed to watch him and report, so soon as they could ascertain it, his purpose in revisiting Bogota. When he was separated from Herran by the regiment of volunteers on the Honda road, he was found in a state of mental bewilderment, not conscious, apparently, that he had lost his traveling companions, but anxious to find his way to some place, which he vaguely described. While in this condition he seemed to recognize the cavemen with whom he was talking. Aided by their hints and suggestions, his recollection of the cave, and especially of Sajipona, grew in vividness. He appeared to remember nothing of Herran, nor of his immediate object in visiting Bogota. But he spoke with increasing clearness of the Land of the Condor. He recalled what had befallen him there three years ago as if it had happened quite recently, and declared he was looking for Sajipona, of whom he spoke with the greatest admiration and gratitude. As he was uncertain of his way, he asked the cavemen to guide him. This, of course, they were ready to do, although they were completely mystified by the sudden oblivion into which, apparently, all his present friends and purposes had fallen in his mind. Sajipona alone he remembered. Three years had passed since he last saw her—but the events crowded into those three years seemed to have left not the slightest trace on his memory. He described his first visit to the cave; but the time between that period and this remained a blank in his mind.

All this Raoul had gathered from the cavemen who, reverting to the Indian belief in such matters, declared that David was bewitched. In a sense, Raoul knew this to be true. He knew also that the spells wrought by modern witchcraft were easily broken by any scientist holding the clew to them. That the cavemen, who possessed secrets in physics unknown to the outer world, should be ignorant of the simplest phenomena of hypnotism was not extraordinary. Even Sajipona shared, to a certain extent, the superstitions of those around her regarding David. She expected Raoul to break the “enchantment” under which David suffered. Una, familiar with Leighton’s experiments and speculations in this field, was quite as confident as the queen that the case was within Raoul’s power. Raoul alone realized the possible consequences following David’s return to normal consciousness.

“Even if I could do as you say,” he asked, “why would you have David changed?”

“As he is now, he is not himself.”

“No, he is not himself,” repeated Una eagerly.

Sajipona’s cheek paled; her lips tightened as if to prevent an angry rejoinder.

“Are you not content with him as he is?” persisted Raoul.

“What is that to you?” she asked coldly. Then, no longer disguising her emotion, she went on:

“You don’t understand what is between us. He comes from a world that I have never seen. In the legends of our kings there is one telling of a stranger who suddenly appears from a land of clouds—a land no man knows—who brings with him the power to make my people, as they once were, rulers of their own land. It is an old tale. Believe it or not—who can be sure of these things? Certainly, the stranger has never come—unless it is David.”

“There have been many strangers since that time,” said Raoul cynically. “Your people have disappeared before the Spaniard. They live unknown, forgotten, in a cave in the mountains. Why do you think David is the stranger in the legend?”

She drew herself up scornfully. Her dark beauty, flashing eye, quivering nostril, needed not the emerald diadem of the ancient Chibchas encircling her brow to proclaim her royal lineage.

“We are not so poor, so abandoned, as you seem to think,” she said. “This is all that is left of a mighty kingdom, it is true—a cave unknown to the rest of the world. But here we are, at least, free. We live the life of our fathers. Our old men have taught us wisdom that is unknown to you. We have wealth—not only the wealth that you are seeking—but secrets of earth and air you have never dreamed of.”

“This may be—I believe it is—all true. But—what is David to do here?” murmured Una.

“If he is the Stranger of the old legend, the Gilded Man we have awaited, this Land of the Condor is his.”

“You are its queen.”

“He will be its king.”

“You have told him?” asked Raoul.

“Years ago. We were happy. I loved him. It was not as the women of your world love. Life was less than his least wish. And he loved me. Plans for the great rejoicing—the Feast of the Gilded Man—were made. Not since the Spaniards came—perhaps never before—has there been such preparation. Then, a change came over him. He talked of an outside world he had seen in his dreams. He was bewitched then, as he is now. He had forgotten you, his false friend, and all the life he had lived before. To cure him, I sent him out with some of our people. He scarcely understood, but he accepted anything I did as if it came from his own will. Then he disappeared. Without a word he left me. There came long years of uncertainty. The few months he passed with me here seemed like some bright dream that vanishes. I began to think it was a dream—when suddenly I heard of him again. Some of my people found him wandering aimlessly in the forest near the Bogota road. He was looking for me, he said—he had forgotten the rest of the world.”

There was an artless simplicity in Sajipona’s confession of her love and disappointment that was more than eloquence. Narva stood apart, her face shrouded in her mantle, motionless, as if the remembrance of these bygone matters carried with it something of a religious experience. Upon Una the effect was startlingly different. She listened in amazement, indignation, at this revelation of a passion in which her lover had shared—of which she had known nothing—and that seemed to place him utterly apart from her. If Sajipona’s tale was true—the manner of its telling, her own engaging personality, carried irresistible conviction—David’s love for Una had been shadowed all along by an earlier, deeper sentiment that gave it the color of something that was not altogether real. Why had he never told her of this Indian romance? Hypnotism indeed! What man could help kneeling in passionate adoration before this queenly woman, whose beauty was of that glorious warmth and fragrance belonging to the purple and scarlet flowers of one’s dreams, whose love combined the unreasoning devotion of a child with the proud loyalty that inspires martyrdom? They had loved—David and Sajipona—there could be no doubt of that. Before he met Una on the shores of that far-off English lake, David had stood soul to soul in a heaven created by this radiant being. He was with her again. The past was completely blotted out; the tender idyl of Derwentwater, of Rysdale, forgotten. Even the sight of Una herself stirred but the vaguest ripple of memory. There was mystery, certainly, in these strange moods of forgetfulness from which David was suffering. Her uncle could give them a learned name and account for them as belonging to something quite outside the man’s will, outside his control. But what did Leighton really know of all this? Such matters were beyond the reach of the mere scientist. With a flash of scorn she doubted Leighton’s knowledge; his wisdom seemed curiously limited. David’s malady—if it was to be called a malady—was nothing less than the delirium caused by love itself, and as such beyond the reach of clinic or laboratory. The spell, the witchcraft, that had transformed him was wrought by Sajipona.

At first Una had not believed this; now the sudden conviction that the man she loved was faithless to her, had always been faithless to her, brought an overwhelming sense of bitterness. Her former anxiety to save him—from peril as she thought—gave place to a feeling that was almost vindictive. She did not view him with the anger of the jealous woman merely; she wanted to have done with him, to forget him altogether. His name was linked by this beautiful Indian to one of the legends of her race; let it remain there!

“Why disturb him now?” she demanded passionately of Sajipona. “He loves you, he is content.”

The revulsion of feeling in her voice was unmistakable. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes, eloquent hitherto of womanly tenderness, dilated in anger. Sajipona smiled enigmatically.

“If you had not come,” she said, “there would have been no question. But you are here. He seems to have forgotten you. I am not sure, I want to be certain, now that he has forgotten you, that he is still himself.”

“Why do you doubt? Yes, he has forgotten me. And he is in your power, he is yours! Why hazard anything further?”

Sajipona ignored the scornful meaning conveyed in the words, regarding Una with a detachment indicating her absorption in a new train of thought.

“A moment ago you were anxious for his safety,” she murmured. “You came here to look for him, to rescue him. Perhaps I have been unjust—perhaps you have a claim——”

“I have no claim,” retorted Una proudly. “Once you saved his life. He has come to you again. He loves you. What man could help loving you!” she added bitterly.

Still Sajipona smiled.

“I must be sure of all this—and so must you,” she said. “If the witchcraft is mine, its power will soon be broken. If there is something else, you, Senor, will discover it.”

She turned impatiently to Raoul, desiring him to go with her to David. Una refused to accompany them. The conviction that she had been mistaken, deluded, filled her with an unconquerable aversion to meeting the man for whom she had been willing to sacrifice so much. Aware of the unreasonableness of this feeling, she yet had no wish to conquer it. To escape from this land of mysteries and terrors, to return to the simple familiar environment of Rysdale—to forget, if that were possible—was now her one desire. She did not attempt to explain or justify herself to Sajipona. Nor was this necessary. To Sajipona, Una’s anger and its cause were alike evident.

“Stay here, if you will, with Narva,” said the queen, with real or feigned indifference. “But remember, you have refused to save the man whom you think is in danger.”

Una did not reply. For the moment the old Indian sibyl, to whose protection she had been assigned, seemed a welcome refuge. Narva’s reserve, her silence, brought a negative sort of relief to her own moods of anguish and indignation. Thus, without regret or misgiving, she watched Raoul and Sajipona disappear through the portal that had first admitted her to the great hall of the palace.