"What of that other?" she said, while her eyes held those of the man with their magic spell.
"What other?" he stammered, turning pale.
"That one!" she flashed.
At that moment the curtain parted again and into the changing light, emitted by the great revolving globe, swayed a woman. At first it seemed a statue of marble that had become animated and, ere consciousness had resumed its sway, was slowly gaining life and motion, still bound up in the dream existence into which some unknown power had plunged her.
As one petrified, Basil stared at the swaying form of Hellayne. A white transparent byssus veil enveloped the beautiful limbs. Her wonderful bare arms were raised above her head, which was slightly inclined, as in a listening attitude. She seemed to move unconsciously as under a spell or as one who walks in her sleep. Her eyes were closed. The pale face showed suffering, yet had not lost one whit of its marvellous beauty.
The revellers stared spellbound at what, to their superstitious minds, seemed the wraith of slain Roxana returned to earth to haunt her rival.
Suddenly, without warning, the dark-robed form of a man dashed from behind a pillar. No one seemed to have noted his presence. Overthrowing every impediment, he bounded straight for Hellayne, when he saw the lithe form snatched up before his very eyes and her abductor disappear with his burden, as if the ground had swallowed them.
It seemed to Tristan that he was rushing through an endless succession of corridors and passages, crossing each other at every conceivable angle, in his mad endeavor to snatch his precious prey from her abductor when, in a rotunda in which these labyrinthine passages converged, he found himself face to face with an apparition that seemed to have risen from the floor.
Before him stood Theodora.
Her dark shadow was wavering across the moonlit network of light. The red and blue robes of the painted figures on the wall glowed about her like blood and azure, while the moonlight laid lemon colored splashes upon the varied mosaics of the floor.