The dancers had already retired to the sitting-out alcoves. Only one figure occupied the floor, and that figure was Stafford's. He was crossing the room and had reached the center when the cry had been uttered. The amazed and startled watchers saw Lois rush toward him and with an incredible strength and rapidity thrust him to one side. A second later—it scarcely seemed a second—the immense golden chandelier crashed with a sound like thunder on to the very spot where he had been standing. A moment's uproar and horrified confusion ensued. The place, plunged in a half-darkness, seemed filled with dust and flying fragments, and people hurrying backward and forward, scarcely knowing what had happened or what had been the extent of the accident. Stafford's voice was the first to bring reassurance to the startled crowd.
"It's all right!" he shouted. "We are both safe, thank God!"
They saw that he was deadly pale, though otherwise calm and collected. In the first moment of alarm he had instinctively caught Lois in his arms, as though to shield her from some fresh danger, but immediately afterward he had let her go, and she stood apart amidst the debris of the wrecked chandelier, trembling slightly, but firmly refusing all assistance.
"I owe my life to you," Stafford said to her, with awkward gratitude.
"You do not need to thank me," she answered at once. "I did what any one else would have done in my place. I saw it coming."
"How did it happen?" The question came from Nehal Singh, who had forced his way to her side. "I can not understand how such an accident was possible."
There was an anxiety in his manner which seemed to increase during
Lois' brief hesitation.
"I hardly like to say," she said at last, in a troubled voice. "I could not believe my eyes, and even now it seems like a dream. Or a shadow might have deceived me. I don't know—"
"Please tell me what you saw, or thought you saw!" the Rajah begged earnestly.
"I seemed to see the chandelier being lowered," she said, with an irrepressible shudder, "and then from a dark hole in the ceiling a hand appeared—a black hand with a knife—"