A voice awakened her.  Someone knelt beside her in the darkness, supporting her; someone who spoke wildly, despairingly, but with a strange, emotional reverence curbing the passion in his voice.

“Rita—­my Rita!  What have they done to you?  Speak to me. . . .  Oh God!  Spare her to me. . . .  Let her hate me for ever, but spare her—­spare her.  Rita, speak to me!  I tried, heaven hear me, to save you little girl.  I only want you to be happy!”

She felt herself being lifted gently, tenderly.  And as though the man’s passionate entreaty had called her back from the dead, she reentered into life and strove to realize what had happened.

Sir Lucien was supporting her, and she found it hard to credit the fact that it was he, the hard, nonchalant man of the world she knew, who had spoken.  She clutched his arm with both hands.

“Oh, Lucy!” she whispered.  “I am so frightened—­and so ill.”

“Thank God,” he said huskily, “she is alive.  Lean against me and try to stand up.  We must get away from here.”

Rita managed to stand upright, clinging wildly to Sir Lucien.  A square, vaguely luminous opening became visible to her.  Against it, silhouetted, she could discern part of the outline of Kazmah’s chair.  She drew back, uttering a low, sobbing cry.  Sir Lucien supported her, and: 

“Don’t be afraid, dear,” he said reassuringly.  “Nothing shall hurt you.”

He pushed open a door, and through it shone the same vague light which she had seen in the opening behind the chair.  Sir Lucien spoke rapidly in a language which sounded like Spanish.  He was answered by a perfect torrent of words in the same tongue.

Fiercely he cried something back at the hidden speaker.

A shriek of rage, of frenzy, came out of the darkness.  Rita felt that consciousness was about to leave her again.  She swayed forward dizzily, and a figure which seemed to belong to delirium—­a lithe shadow out of which gleamed a pair of wild eyes—­leapt upon her.  A knife glittered. . . .

In order to have repelled the attack, Sir Lucien would have had to release Rita, who was clinging to him, weak and terror-stricken.  Instead he threw himself before her. . . .  She saw the knife enter his shoulder. . . .

Through absolute darkness she sank down into a land of chaotic nightmare horrors.  Great bells clanged maddeningly.  Impish hands plucked at her garments, dragged her hair.  She was hurried this way and that, bruised, torn, and tossed helpless upon a sea of liquid brass.  Through vast avenues lined with yellow, immobile Chinese faces she was borne upon a bier.  Oblique eyes looked into hers.  Knives which glittered greenly in the light of lamps globular and suspended in immeasurable space, were hurled at her in showers. . . .

Sir Lucien stood before her, supporting her; and all the knives buried themselves in his body.  She tried to cry out, but no sound could she utter.  Darkness fell again. . . .