"No, Gamine." Narayan stepped toward the man in crimson, "Adric," he said in a strange, half-choked excitement, "I want to see what you saw before—to see what sent you away—to see the thing that drove you mad. Gamine's veils—Gamine, let him see! Show him, Gamine! Show him what he saw then!"
Gamine came forward slowly to where Karamy knelt. "Stand up!"
Slowly Karamy rose to her feet. There was no hope in her eyes; no mercy in Gamine's. The two pairs of eyes, cat-yellow and blue, fought for a moment; it was Karamy's that fell. The Dreamer woman smiled faintly. "My brothers and my sisters," she said at last, "Karamy is beautiful, is she not?"
I suppose no woman on earth has ever been or ever will be as beautiful as Karamy the Golden. She stood proudly, turning to Adric, and I saw longing and love break forth in the man's eyes. He gazed and gazed, and Karamy laughed and held out her arms, and Adric, bemused, went toward her—
"Hold him," commanded Narayan tersely.
One of the Dreamers made a curious sign with his left hand and Adric was arrested; stood gripped in a vise of invisible force.
"See?" Gamine said in a ringing voice, "But now see Karamy—shorn of the Illusion her Dreamer threw! See the form of Karamy that she made me wear! This!" She reached out and touched Karamy with the little Talisman she held.
There was a gasp of horror from many throats. Karamy—Karamy the Golden—there are no words for the change that took place before our eyes. I was sick and retching with horror before the metamorphosis was half complete, and turned away my eyes; Cynara was sobbing softly into her skirt; but Adric, frozen, could not look away.
Gamine's laugh—low and sweet and doubly deadly for its sweetness—reached my ears. "Shall I lend you my veils—sister?" She murmured, mocking, and again the horrible laugh. "NO? Go forth!" Her voice was a lashing whip, and with a broken wail, the thing that had been Karamy threw up an arm across the staring sockets and fled away into the night. And we never saw it again.
So that was the end of Karamy the Golden—the end—