CHAPTER XIX.
“HE IS NOT HERE!”
As she stepped from the car, Rondah heard a chill, queer laugh. She glanced at the stranger. Was it he? He stood beside the car and was looking at her with a singular expression, half triumph, half intense apprehension.
As Rondah, looking at him, began to realize that he had brought her to the island and left Regan outside, the man touched the car. Its sails expanded. It flew away; striking the wall in the air, it fell a mass of cloth and fragments.
“It has returned—the wall,” said the man, composedly.
“Where is Regan? He is not here!”
“He waits outside the wall, I suppose! We were a little late!”
“Go after him!”
“I cannot go!”
Rondah fled toward the sea, only to be stopped by the invisible barrier. She ran aimlessly and helplessly about, sobbing and shrieking until she was worn out. Then she sank upon a bank and looked about her. Tossing her red hair from her face, she struck her gemmed coronet and it fell upon the rocks, where it looked like a piece of brass on the jewel-like surface of the Sun Island.
The amazing splendor almost blinded Rondah’s weeping eyes. The cliffs were of garnet and of yellow amber. They rose out of sight in the serene, changeless radiance. The canopy of clouds above the island was one sheen of rainbow hue.