Her voice sank to a low prayerful emphasis, . . her look was as of a rapt angel waiting for wings.  Lysia’s gaze dwelt upon her with slow-dilating wonder and contempt.. such a devout and earnest supplication was evidently not commonly heard from the lips of Nagaya’s victims.  At that instant, too, Nagaya himself seemed curiously excited and disturbed,—­his great glittering coils quivered so violently, as to shake the rod on which he was twined, . . and when his Priestess raised her mesmeric reproving eyes toward him, he bent back his head rebelliously, and sent a vehement hiss through the silence, like the noise made by the whirl of a scimitar.

Suddenly, and with deafening abruptness, a clap of thunder, short and sharp as a quick volley of musketry, crashed overhead,—­ accompanied by a strange circular sweep of lightning that blazed through the windows of the Temple, illumining it from end to end with a brilliant blue glare.  The superstitious crowd exchanged startled looks of terror, . . the King moved uneasily and glanced frowningly about him,—­it was plainly manifest that no one had forgotten the disastrous downfall of the Obelisk, ..and there seemed to be a contagion of alarm in the very air.  But Lysia was perfectly self-possessed, . . in fact she appeared to accept the threat of a storm as an imposing, and by no means undesirable, adjunct to the mysteries of the Sacrificial Rite, for riveting her basilisk eyes on Niphrata, she said in firm, clear, decisive accents: 

“The gods grow impatient! ...  Wherefore, O Princess and People of Al-Kyris, let us hasten to appease their anger!  Depart, O stainless Maid! ... depart hence, and betake thee to the Golden Throne of the Sun, our Lord and Ruler, . . and in the Name of Nagaya, may the shedding of thy virginal blood avert from us and ours the wrath of the Immortals!  Linger no longer, . .  Nagaya accepts thee! ... and the Hour strikes Death!”

With the last word a sullen bell boomed heavily through and through the Temple.. and, at once, . . like a frenzied bird or butterfly winging its way into scorching flame, . .  Niphrata rushed forward with swift, unhesitating, dreadful precision straight on the knife outheld by the untrembling ruthless hands of the Priest Zel!  One second,—­and Theos sick with horror, saw her speeding thus, . . the next,—­and the whole place was enveloped in dense darkness!

CHAPTER XXIX.

The cup of wrath and trembling.

A flash of time, . . an instant of black, horrid eclipse, too brief for the utterance of even a word or cry, ... and then,—­with an appalling roar, as of the splitting of huge rocks and the tearing asunder of mighty mountains, the murky gloom was lifted, rent, devoured, and swept away on all sides by a sudden bursting forth of Fire! ...  Fire leaped up alive in twenty different parts of the building, springing aloft in