After leaving Sajipona, Una found herself in an apartment small compared with the spacious courts and chambers she had seen elsewhere in the palace. This apartment differed, also, in its furnishings—a few uncompromising stone benches along the walls and nothing more—while the dim light gave to everything a gloomy, uninviting character. But Una was in no mood to linger; the queen’s words had filled her with an anxiety that must be appeased at once. Hurrying down the middle of the long room, she reached, at the further end, a sort of staircase, or ramp, leading upward in long, sweeping spirals to a height that was lost in intervening walls and clustered columns. Mounting this ramp, she noted with pleasure that as the ground floor receded everything lightened. Judging by the splendid upward curve of the walls, she concluded that she must be ascending a gallery winding around the great central dome of the court where, a moment before, she had listened with the others to Sajipona’s account of the mysteries of the cave. On the inner side of the gallery, the side overhanging the court, the wall was semi-transparent, and through it sparkled flashes of the radium light flooding the great chamber within. Light came, also, from the opposite side, filtering downward, apparently through another medium, from the central luminary above. The air grew warmer; there were faint perfumes, as if of essences distilled from tropical flowers, that thrilled with a delightful drowsiness. Soft echoes from distant music increased this feeling of restfulness. Sound and fragrance were so subtly united, they seemed so completely an irradiation from the inner spirit brooding over the place, that one accepted them as being utterly natural, utterly free from the startling or the marvelous.

Una could not guess the source of the liquid, musical notes. They might have come from the quaint instruments she had seen so deftly played upon by the cavemen marching with Anitoo, or from the lyre that, at Sajipona’s touch, gave forth such plaintive melodies. But the music she listened to now was not continuous; its lack of formal melody, unity of theme, gave it a quality different from anything she had ever heard. In the outer world it might have been taken for the windsong sweeping through tossed branches of forest trees. But here there was neither wind nor forest. The air was motionless, and had ever been so; the vast spaces seemed filled with the unruffled sleep of centuries. Down below, in the great court, and even in the palace garden, saturated with light and beauty though both were, one felt something of the chill mystery that penetrates all underground places. Here there was mystery, but it was a kind that soothed rather than terrified. Tier by tier, as Una passed along the slender white columns enclosing the gallery up which she was ascending, the sense of gloom, foreboding, that had weighed upon her until now, was weakened. She felt the magic of a new world of romance and adventure. She was at the very heart of its secret. Flashes of color in paneled niches along the walls piqued her curiosity. Robes of vivid scarlet, hiding limbs of sparkling whiteness, it might be, hung just beyond her reach. Further on these niches were filled with glittering masses of gold, heaped high in barbaric scorn of art or fitness. Rudely fashioned crowns, massive enough to have burdened their wearers with more than the traditional care that goes with royalty; armlets, breastplates, tiaras heavy with emeralds—in deep recesses, row on row, from story to story, these witnesses of the pomp and pride of fallen nations, were thrown together in a careless profusion possible only in an Aladdin’s palace of marvels.

As Una hurried past she realized with a thrill that she was in the ancient treasure-house of a once mighty empire. The fruit of the earth’s richest mines, brought here by the labor and cunning of centuries, lay at her hand. It seemed impossible that all this jeweled splendor could have escaped the fires of war and crime that had kindled within the breasts of millions who had sacrificed their lives merely to grasp some small portion of it. Fascinating baubles now were these relics of past greatness, dainty or rude, meaningless, or eloquent of forgotten faiths and legends. Innocent of harm they seemed, a passing feast for the eye, trophies to celebrate and adorn feminine loveliness, but no longer a madness in the bones of men.

Thus, vaguely, did this vision of ancient riches appear to Una. Gold and jewels, robes and ornaments wrought by an art that had been lost long since—the rich color, the glitter of all these things delighted her. They seemed a part—the visible part—of the music and fragrance with which the winding gallery of marvels was filled. It appeared to her that she was on the threshold of some great awakening experience. She knew that it was David whom she would see; and this knowledge started a strange conflict of emotions. The memory of his lack of faith, the incomprehensible manner in which he had turned from her, brought humiliation, anger. But the first bitterness that went with all this had lost its corrosive power. The spell of the ancient Indian race whose secrets she was exploring was upon her. Her senses were soothed by the mysterious beauty of these enchanted corridors. Here she would see David—and the thought was indefinitely satisfying. She did not know whether she could forgive him, whether she could become reconciled to a disloyalty that had so easily swerved him from the most sacred of vows. But after all it was witchcraft—only witchcraft could work such things as these—that had estranged him from her. This she knew because the inner heart of her own love remained as it had ever been. He was still David. He needed her, he was unhappy. Outwardly he might seem faithless as the most shameless Proteus of romance. Nevertheless, there was something else, something that even Sajipona could not know, but that she knew and that bound him to her. It was for this she had followed him through inconceivable adventures—for this, one danger after another had been faced and overcome. And now all this misery had reached a happy ending. He was here, awaiting her like some prince in a fairy palace. Sajipona had promised it, had brought them together at last. She felt his presence before she heard his voice. And then he spoke to her:

“Una, what new witchcraft has brought you here!”

He stood at a turn in the gallery up which she was ascending. As their eyes met, the distant, wind-blown music, the subtle fragrance of flowers, seemed to bring into this palace of mystery and enchantment the fields and meadows of Rysdale. There she and David were again together, vowing their first love. The harmonies of brooks, birds, the ripples that sped their canoe past woodland and down shaded valleys, the thousand intimate details of the springtide loved of lovers, were about them once more. For the David who stood beside her in the queen’s treasure-house was the David of that far-off, peaceful countryside, not the strange being she had met for that brief dark moment in front of Sajipona’s palace. At the first glance she could see he had passed through some vital change since then. He was no longer as a man walking in dreams. There was no troubled uncertainty in his face, no faltering in his step. He came to her now, all his soul in his eyes, but with perplexed look for all that, as if the destiny that had parted them had not yet consented to their reunion.

“I have been dreaming,” he said simply. “It was an old dream, I find. Now that I am awake, some lights and shadows from my dream-world remain to haunt me.”

His brief explanation of the strange mental experience he had just been through was scarcely needed. Una told him how they had searched for him, how they had finally heard of this cave and of his first adventure in it. And then, how, tracking him to this place, they had met Sajipona and learned of the wonders of her underground kingdom.

“We are awaiting the festival now,” she said wistfully. “She told me of it, and sent me here to meet you. I think it must have begun already. The music—it must be the music for the Gilded Man—has grown louder and louder as I have climbed this wonderful gallery. Sajipona and the rest will meet us—it must be just there, beyond.”

They had clasped each other’s hands, their eyes looked their fill. But now they stood apart, their faces averted, words of passionate avowal unuttered on David’s lips.

“The festival! I know!” David exclaimed.

Then he turned again to Una, taking her hand and trying to disguise the grief that was all too plain in words and manner. He told her of Sajipona’s kindness, of his gratitude to her. He described something of her plans to redeem her people from the ill fortune that had shut them out from the rest of the world. All this, he said, could not be accomplished right away; but the first step would be taken now. David had a part to play in the working out of the queen’s plan. But just what he was to do, what this part was, he guessed only vaguely. The bringing together of the ancient people with the new, the Indian race with their white conquerors—something of the kind was in her mind. The vast store of wealth, also, that they saw about them was to be distributed among those who needed it. Sajipona and her people had long since ceased to care for this treasure that had brought such untold suffering and misfortune to their race. But they would not part with it until they were certain of their recompense. And perhaps they wouldn’t part with it at all—there seemed to be a curse attached to these blood-stained emeralds and gold.

In all this, perhaps symbolically, the festival, the first strains of which they could hear, would have much to do—and Sajipona and he were to be the leading figures in that festival. He had consented to this—freely. The declaration was made with melancholy emphasis. It seemed to Una the death-knell to their happiness. It placed David suddenly in a world quite outside her own, as if all along his life had been, must be, apart from hers. There could be only one reason for this, of course—Sajipona! Una seized upon it bitterly.

“You have always loved her!” she cried.

David did not answer. The fates that had brought them to this pass were much too intricate to be lightly disentangled. Sajipona was to him a being exquisitely beautiful—beautiful in every way—the most perfect woman he had known. But there was a strength and glory in her loveliness that placed her above the reach of mere human affection. She was a being separate and distinct from all others—and yet necessary to the very existence of the thousands who seemed to be dependent on her. It might be love that he felt for her—but it was more like the adoration with which one regards something sacred, infinitely distant and beyond our own likings and frailties. This feeling of adoration might, indeed, have been transformed into the passion called love. This surely would have happened had it not been for one thing——

“Una, I love you!”

She started, looking wonderingly at him. How could he say that to her now, after all that had passed? Could it be possible that he was still in that strange dream-state from which, he declared, he had been so happily awakened? Ah, but it was in that dream-state that he did not love her, did not even know her! And now—her own exclamation was eloquent of the doubt, the amazement with which she heard him—

“David!”

“But, it is perfectly true,” he protested. “Why don’t you believe me? You always have believed me! What is before us I cannot tell for certain. Sajipona has my word, and whatever she commands I will do. I owe her my life. More than that—the faith that a man gives to one whose beauty has opened to him the depths of his own soul. But this has nothing to do with us. This is not love. Come what will, I love you, Una. I love you—I love you!”

They looked at each other fearfully. There might be logic, of a sort—logic born of a kind of poetic exaltation—in the distinction that David tried to draw between the two women and his own feeling for them. Circumstances, however, were stronger than argument. They felt the approach of disaster. By David’s own confession, if Sajipona willed it, their love was lost. For the first time Una realized that it was not David, not anything really tangible, but a power outside of him that kept them apart. Against the apparent evidence of her senses, her faith in David was restored. She knew him now, she felt, as she had never known him before. And they loved—that was enough. It was all very difficult to unravel, the maze they were in. There might be endless tragedy at the next turn of the gallery. But at least there was love here, if only for the briefest of moments. Their reawakened passion tingled in their veins. Reason or unreason, they knew they belonged to each other—although they might be separated forever before this day of miracles was over. Una’s jealousy, doubt, bitterness were all forgotten. Her cheek flushed with joy, her eyes sparkled with the sweet madness that belongs only to youth, youth at the highest pinnacle of its desire. Neither spoke. Speech would have silenced the wordless eloquence with which their love revealed itself. They drew closer to each other. Again their hands met. Their lips touched. Love swept away all doubts and denials in one passionate embrace.

Ever since the world began lovers have solved their difficulties thus, and they will doubtless choose this dumb method long after an aging civilization has pointed out a better one. Whether they are wise or not, a college of philosophers would fail to convince us. In this particular instance Love put forth his plea at the very instant when these, his youthful votaries, were wanted of another, alien destiny. As they stood together, oblivious of all else save their own passion, the music grew louder, more joyous, throbbing now in statelier, more intelligible cadence than before. At the end of the gallery a new light began to break. The intervening wall disappeared, disclosing an inner chamber filled with a throng of gaily dressed people, some of whom played upon musical instruments, while others swung golden censers from which floated forth in amber clouds the fragrance of many gardens.

A living corridor of color, formed of courtiers, musicians, priests, extended from this inner chamber in a spreading half circle, the broad portion of which reached the gallery where David and Una were standing. At the center of all this light and motion and color was Sajipona, every inch of her a queen, although the pallor of her cheek, the unwonted tenseness of eye and lip, told of emotions that needed all a queen’s strength to restrain. Immediately about her were grouped the explorers; Miranda, silenced for once by the splendor of the scene in which he suddenly found himself in a leading part; Leighton, still absorbed in the problems of science revealed at every turn in this wonderland. Just above and behind them rose a human figure of heroic proportions, concealed from head to foot in flowing white draperies. Against the rounded pedestal of green stone sustaining this figure leaned Sajipona, one arm resting along the base of the statue, the other lost in the silken folds of her robe.

As David and Una, startled by the sudden clash of the music, raised their heads, her eye caught theirs. Like a queen of marble she looked at them, unrecognizing, motionless, save for the slightest tremor of her faultlessly chiseled mouth—the one sign that she saw and knew. With a gesture she checked the music. Silence followed, unbroken by the faintest murmur of voices or rustle of garments from the waiting throng of cavemen. Unabashed by this strange reception, moved only by the steady gaze of the majestic woman standing before him, David, still clasping Una’s hand, came swiftly forward and would have thrown himself impetuously at Sajipona’s feet. The faintest hint of a smile gleamed in her eyes as she prevented this show of homage. Her greeting came clear and low from quivering lips:

“This is our festival, David!”

Again the music sounded, not, as before, in a joyous burst of melody, but in a slow chant, barbaric in feeling, wailing, unearthly. The listening throng moved uneasily, filled with vague premonitions of what was to come. Sajipona lifted her hands to the statue, then smiled serenely at the two lovers before her. The spell was broken.

“This is the ancient festival of my people,” she said. “It should be a time for rejoicing. The Gilded Man awaits us.”

As she spoke the veils covering the statue dropped one by one to the ground. Before them stood, dazzling, glorious, the figure of a man carved in gold. His head was uplifted, as if intent on something beyond the ordinary ken of mortal. Only the face was clearly and sharply chiseled; the rest of the figure—limbs, body, and flowing drapery—blended together in one massive pillar of flaming gold.

The effect on the beholder of this exquisitely molded shaft of metal, upon which the radium light from above sparkled and flashed, was indescribable. The brilliance, the lavishness of it, savored of barbarism; but the delicacy of detail, the simple pathos and exaltation portrayed in the face, had in it an art that was Nature’s own. And the wonder of it, the miracle that caught all men’s eyes as they looked, was the likeness that lived in every feature. For this Gilded Man, newly wrought to preside over the last festival of this forgotten race; this one final splendid piece of work that summed up all that was best and noblest in an ancient art, was a deathless portrait in gold of the man who stood before Sajipona, of the man upon whom she had built her hopes, and for whom she would sacrifice everything. It was David—a queen’s tribute of immortal love.

Touched at heart, the living David knelt at Sajipona’s feet, pressing her robe to his lips. A moment she stooped caressingly above him, whispering words that none—not even he—could hear. Then proudly she stood before them, regarding those about her with an eye that did not falter in its imperious glance.

“It is the last festival,” she said. “With this the Land of the Condor will pass away. The outside world of men has tracked us here before the dream that we had of a golden age could be fulfilled. Not with us can these be allied. They love not as we love; their faith, the beauty that they prize, is not as ours. In another time it might have been—perhaps it still will be. But, if it is to be, that dream will come true ages after this Feast, this Sacrifice, of the Golden Man is over.”

As she finished speaking, Sajipona looked again at David, unspoken grief in her eyes. He stretched his hands to her, murmuring her name, appealing to her, terror-stricken by the stern look that slowly overspread her features, telling of some great and tragic purpose she was bent on carrying out. But she was unmoved by his entreaties. Slowly she turned away. Then, beckoning to the priests, Saenzias and Omono, she disappeared with them behind the golden statue. Those who remained, breathlessly awaited her return—the explorers restless and anxious, the cavemen rapt in a sort of religious ecstasy. It was thus that their ancestors had awaited the plunge of the Indian monarch into the dark silent waters of the Sacred Lake.

And now high above them the thin wall of the palace roof was opened. Without, the great sun of this underworld poured down its radiance. Almost blinded, they could still dimly see, standing just on a level with this sun, Sajipona arrayed as became the last descendant of the zipas. At her side were the two priests; but these retreated as the scorching heat pierced them. For an instant she stood where they left her, a vision of majestic beauty that fascinated and held them spellbound. Then, chanting an Indian song of triumph, the pÆan with which the ancient kings heralded their descent to the god beneath the waters of the Sacred Lake, she cast herself into the globe of fire.

A wave of light flamed across the upturned face of the golden statue, a wail of mingled exultation and despair arose from the throng below.

The Festival of the Gilded Man was ended.