There was no hope for him, he must fall—fall, and fall forever.
At this moment, when his burning hands clung to the rock, when his feet were dangling in the air, when his blood-shot eyes, protruding from their sockets, glared ghastily above, a new wonder attracted the gaze of Aldarin.
A stairway, built of white marble, wide, roomy, and secure, seemed to spring from the very rock to which he clung, and winding up from the cataract, encircled by white and rainbow-hued clouds, was lost in the distance, far, far above.
Aldarin beheld two figures slowly descending the stairway from the distance—the figure of a warrior and the form of a dark-eyed woman.
As they drew near and nearer, he felt a strange feeling of awe gathering round his heart.
He knew the figures, he knew them well.
Her face of beauty wore a smile, her dark eyes were brilliant as ever, brilliant as when first he wooed and won her in the wilds of Palestine. Yet there was blood upon her vestments near the heart; and his lip was spotted with one drop of thick red blood.
It was most fearful to see them thus calmly approach; it was most terrible to recognize every line of their features, every part of their vestments.
“This,” muttered Aldarin, “this indeed, is Hell.—And yet he must call for aid, and call to the warrior and the woman. How the thought writhed like a serpent round his very heart!”
He was sliding from the rock, slowly, yet certainly sliding. Another moment and he would plunge below. There was but one hope. He might, by a desperate effort, drag his carcass along the pointed rock: by a single extension of his arm, his hand would grasp the lowest step of the stairway.