Evidently Sanson did not know that the main prop of his new house had fallen.
CHAPTER XXI
AMARANTH
I stepped out of the elevator into a part of the Palace that I had not seen before. The room into which the waiting negro ushered me was completely dark, though a thin line of light at the further end showed me that there was a lighted room beyond.
I strained my eyes, striving to penetrate the gloom. I took a few steps forward, stretching out my hands to feel if any obstacle were in the way. Looking back, I could not even discern the heavy curtain that had dropped soundlessly behind me.
I knew that there was someone in the room, and that it was not Lembken. I waited; I heard the rustle of a woman’s garment. Then swiftly the room was flooded with the soft solar light.
It was bare, except for the rugs and a low divan pushed against one wall, with a little table beside it. Everything was of the color of gold: the walls, the ceiling, the rugs upon the floor. And before me, clothed from head to foot in a sheer, trailing garment of dull gold, stood the girl Amaranth.
Her dark hair was bound back in a loose Grecian knot, her sandaled feet gleamed white on the gold fabric under them; she stretched out her white arms to me and, taking me by the hand, led me to the divan and placed me at her side.
“Poor Arnold!” she began in a caressing tone, “you have suffered so much in your ignorance and your desire to help your friends. But all your troubles are ended now, and your friends shall not be harmed. Do you think you can love me, Arnold?”
She looked at me with neither boldness nor hesitation, and then, folding her arms, drummed her sandal heels against the foot of the divan.
“Are you not lucky, Arnold, to have won my love!” she continued. “I gave my love to you from the moment when I first saw you enter the room in which I sat with Lembken, looking so stern, so resolute, like one of those adventurous heroes of the twentieth century of whom we read in our romances. That is why I made Lembken tell Mehemet to bring you here. He was so hurt by your departure that I think he would have let his plans go to ruin rather than himself plead with you. He is very sensitive and kind.