"My beloved!" she whispered. "Liane was but a woman, after all. Darling! Good-by!" She kissed him again, and hurried to the door.
"One more thing!" she cried. "I must master them myself. I must show them I—I, Liane—am ruler here. You promise? You promise me you will not interfere; that you will do nothing?"
"But—"
Liane interrupted me before I could put my objections into words.
"Promise!" she commanded. "There are hundreds, thousands of them! You cannot slay them all—and if you did, there would be more. I can bend them to my will; they know my power. Promise, or there will be many deaths upon your hands!"
"I promise," I said.
"And you—all of you?" she demanded, sweeping Correy and Kincaide with her eyes.
"Commander Hanson speaks for us all," nodded Kincaide.
With a last glance at Hendricks, whose eyes had never left her for an instant, she was gone.
Hendricks uttered a long, quivering sigh. His face, as he turned to us, was ghastly white.