“What mystery, Senor?”

“Why,” replied Raoul slowly, looking at her intently; “the mystery of those three months when he was supposed to have been in a trance.”

“What is a trance, Don Raoul?” asked the girl innocently.

Raoul laughed.

“Ah, that would be hard to explain to a queen of the Indians,” he said. “A trance is not exactly a sleep, for a man may talk and travel and do things, just like other men, when he’s in a trance. But when he is himself again, he remembers nothing of all that happened when he was in the trance.”

“Then you think he was in a trance during those three months when he disappeared from Bogota?”

“Yes.”

“And that he has forgotten all that happened to him in that time?”

“Perhaps.”