I turned my look straight into the eyes of the angel, and, as I looked, I flung a secret curse at that strange weakness of mine and called myself a fool for having entertained, even for a fleeting moment, a thought so absurd.
Rhodes had noticed, and he turned his look upon me and upon the woman—this creature so indescribably lovely and yet with so indefinable, mysterious a Sibylline something about her. For some moments there was silence. I thought that I saw fear in those blue eyes of hers, but I could not be sure. That strange look, whether one of fear or of something else, was not all that I saw there; but I strove in vain to find a name or a meaning for what I saw.
Science, science! This was the age of science, the age of the jet-plane, the atom-bomb, radium, television and radio; and yet here was a scene to make Science herself rub her eyes in amazement, a scene that might have been taken right out of some wild story or out of some myth of the ancient world. Well, that ancient world too had its science, some of which science, I fear (though this thought would have brought a pooh-pooh from Milton Rhodes) man has lost to his sorrow. And, like that ancient world, so perhaps had this strange underground world which we had entered—or, rather, were trying to enter. And perhaps of that science or some phases of it, this angel before us had fearful command.
One moment I told myself that we should need all the courage we possessed, all the ingenuity and resource of that science of which Milton Rhodes himself was the master; the next, that I was letting my imagination overleap itself and run riot.
My thoughts were suddenly broken by the voice of Milton:
"Goodness, Bill, look at her hand. I forgot."
He stepped toward the angel and gently lifted her blood-dripping hand. The chain had sunk right into the soft flesh. The angel, with a smile and a movement with her left hand, gave us to understand that the hurt was nothing.
The next moment she gave an exclamation and gazed past me and down the pillared cavern.
Instantly I turned, and, as I did so, I too exclaimed.
There, far off amongst the sinister columns, two yellow, wrathful lights were gleaming. And soon we saw them—dark hurrying figures moving towards us.