“Leave him,” I finally said to Tanit-Zerga.  “For once he may sleep here.”

So it was that this little beast incurred his large share of responsibility in the events which followed.

Left alone, I became lost in my reflections.  The night was black.  The whole mountain was shrouded in silence.

It took the louder and louder growls of the leopard to rouse me from my meditation.

King Hiram was braced against the door, digging at it with his drawn claws.  He, who had refused to follow Tanit-Zerga a while ago, now wanted to go out.  He was determined to go out.

“Be still,” I said to him.  “Enough of that.  Lie down!”

I tried to pull him away from the door.

I succeeded only in getting a staggering blow from his paw.

Then I sat down on the divan.

My quiet was short.  “Be honest with yourself,” I said.  “Since Morhange abandoned you, since the day when you saw Antinea, you have had only one idea.  What good is it to beguile yourself with the stories of Tanit-Zerga, charming as they are?  This leopard is a pretext, perhaps a guide.  Oh, you know that mysterious things are going to happen tonight.  How have you been able to keep from doing anything as long as this?”

Immediately I made a resolve.

“If I open the door,” I thought, “King Hiram will leap down the corridor and I shall have great difficulty in following him.  I must find some other way.”

The shade of the window was worked by means of a small cord.  I pulled it down.  Then I tied it into a firm leash which I fastened to the metal collar of the leopard.

I half opened the door.

“There, now you can go.  But quietly, quietly.”

I had all the trouble in the world to curb the ardor of King Hiram who dragged me along the shadowy labyrinth of corridors.  It was shortly before nine o’clock, and the rose-colored night lights were almost burned out in the niches.  Now and then, we passed one which was casting its last flickers.  What a labyrinth!  I realized that from here on I would not recognize the way to her room.  I could only follow the leopard.

At first furious, he gradually became used to towing me.  He strained ahead, belly to the ground, with snuffs of joy.

Nothing is more like one black corridor than another black corridor.  Doubt seized me.  Suppose I should suddenly find myself in the baccarat room!  But that was unjust to King Hiram.  Barred too long from the dear presence, the good beast was taking me exactly where I wanted him to take me.

Suddenly, at a turn, the darkness ahead lifted.  A rose window, faintly glimmering red and green, appeared before us.

The leopard stopped with a low growl before the door in which the rose window was cut.

I recognized it as the door through which the white Targa had led me the day after my arrival, when I had been set upon by King Hiram, when I had found myself in the presence of Antinea.