Manetho was laid gently on the broad robe, and so upraised and borne forwards; Balder at the head, Gnulemah at the foot.  Heavy, heavy is a lifeless body; but the man had cause to wonder at the woman’s fresh and easy strength.  What a contrast was she to the disfigured creature who hobbled moaning beside the litter, the relaxed hand clutched in both hers, kissing it again and again with grotesque passion!  Yet both were women, and loved as women love.

The granite statues sitting serene at the doorway maintained the stony calm which, only, deserves the name of supernatural.  These passed, the flowery heat of the dim conservatory brought them to Gnulemah’s room.  The curtain was looped up and the passage clear.  Thus first did the wedded pair enter what should have been their bridal chamber, and laid the lifeless body on the nuptial bed.

A fair, pure room; the clear walls frescoed with graceful wreaths of floating figures.  In the eastern window, through which the earliest sunbeams loved to fall, stood an alabaster altar; on it a chain of faded dandelions.  The bed was a lovely nest, the lines flowing in long curves,—­a barge of Venus for lovers to voyage to heaven in.  On a table near at hand lay some embroidered work at which Gnulemah’s magic needle had been busy of late.  Balder glanced at these things with a reverence almost timid; and, turning back to what lay so inert and doltish on the sacred bed, he could not but sigh.

Every means was employed to rally the Egyptian from his swoon.  He bore no external marks of injury, but there could be no doubt that he had sustained a terrible shock, and possibly concussion of the brain; the amount of the internal damages could not yet be estimated.—­Meanwhile the black cloud from the west was muttering drowsily overhead, and an occasional lightning-flash dulled the mild radiance of the lamp.  As consciousness ebbed back to the patient, the storm increased, and the trembling roll of heavy thunder drowned the first gasps of returning life.  Had that vast cloud come to shut out his soul from heaven, and was its mighty voice uttering the sentence of his condemnation?  The air was thick with the inconsolable weeping of the rain, and gusty sighs of wind drove its cold tear-drops against the window.

How was it with Manetho?—­During the instant after the ladder had given way and he was rushing through the air and clutching vainly at the dark void, every faculty had violently expanded, so that he seemed to see and think at every pore.  The next instant his rudely battered body refused to bear the soul’s messages; light and knowledge sank into bottomless darkness!

By and by—­for aught he knew it might have been an eternity—­a brief gleam divided the night; then another, and others; he seemed to be moving through air, upborne on a cloud.  He strove to open his eyes, and caught a glimpse of reeling walls,—­of a figure,—­figures.  A deep rumbling sound was in his ears, as of the rolling together of chaotic rocks, gradually subsiding into stillness.