go farther than was needful. So I put the body of Nais over my

shoulder (to leave my right arm free) and blundered off as best I
could through the stifling darkness.

It was hard to find a direction; it was hard to walk in the
inky darkness over ground that was tossed and tumbled like a frozen

sea: and as the earth still quaked and heaved, it was hard also to
keep a footing. But if I did fall myself a score of times, my dear

burden got no bruise, and presently I got to the skirts of the
square, and found a street I knew. The most venomous part of the

shaking was done, and no more buildings fell, but enough lay
sprawled over the roadway to make walking into a climb, and the

sweat rolled from me as I laboured along my way.
There was no difficulty about passing the gate. There was no

gate. There was no wall. The Gods had driven their plough through
it, and it lay flat, and proud Atlantis stood as defenceless as the

open country. Though I knew the cause of this ruin, though, in
fact, I had myself in some measure incited it, I was almost sad at

the ruthlessness with which it had been carried out. The royal
pyramid might go, houses and palaces might be levelled, and for

these I cared little enough; but when I saw those stately ramparts
also filched away, there the soldier in me woke, and I grieved at

this humbling of the mighty city that once had been my only
mistress.

But this was only a passing regret, a mere touch of the
fighting-man's pride. I had a different love now, that had wrapped

herself round me far deeper and more tightly, and my duty was
towards her first and foremost. The night would soon be past, and

then dangers would increase. None had interfered with us so far,
though many had jostled us as I clambered over the ruins; but this

forbearance could not be reckoned upon for long. The earth tremors
had almost died away, and after the panic and the storm, then comes

the time for the spoiling.
All men who were poor would try to seize what lay nearest to

their hands, and those of higher station, and any soldiers who
could be collected and still remained true to command, would

ruthlessly stop and strip any man they saw making off with plunder.
I had no mind to clash with these guardians of law and property,

and so I fled on swiftly through the night with my burden, using
the unfrequented ways; and crying to the few folk who did meet me

that the woman had the plague, and would they lend me the shelter
of their house as ours had fallen. And so in time we came to the

place where the rope dangled from the precipice, and after Nais had
been drawn up to the safety of the Sacred Mountain, I put my leg in

the loop of the rope and followed her.
Now came what was the keenest anxiety of all. We took the

girl and laid her on a bed in one of the houses, and there in the
lit room for the first time I saw her clearly. Her beauty was

drawn and pale. Her eyes were closed, but so thin and transparent
had grown the lids that one could almost see the brown of the pupil

beneath them. Her hair had grown to inordinate thickness and
length, and lay as a cushion behind and beside her head.

There was no flicker of breath; there was none of that pulsing
of the body which denotes life; but still she had not the

appearance of ordinary death. The Nais I had placed nine long
years before to rest in the hollow of the stone, was a fine grown

woman, full bosomed, and well boned. The Nais that remained for
me was half her weight. The old Nais it would have puzzled me to

carry for an hour: this was no burden to impede a grown man.
In other ways too she had altered. The nails of her fingers

had grown to such a great length that they were twisted in spirals,
and the fingers themselves and her hands were so waxy and

transparent that the bony core upon which they were built showed
itself beneath the flesh in plain dull outline. Her clay-cold lips

were so white, that one sighed to remember the full beauty of their
carmine. Her shoulders and neck had lost their comely curves, and

made bony hollows now in which the dust of entombment lodged black
and thickly.

Reverently I set about preparing those things which if all
went well should restore her. I heated water and filled a bath,

and tinctured it heavily with those essences of the life of beasts
which the Priests extract and store against times of urgent need

and sickness. I laid her chin-deep in this bath, and sat beside it
to watch, maintaining that bath at a constant blood heat.

An hour I watched; two hours I watched; three hours--and yet
she showed no flicker of life. The heat of her body given her by

the bath, was the same as the heat of my own. But in the feel of
her skin when I stroked it with my hand, there was something

lacking still. Only when our Lord the Sun rose for His day did I
break off my watching, whilst I said the necessary prayer which is

prescribed, and quickly returned again to the gloom of the house.
I was torn with anxiety, and as the time went on and still no

sign of life came back, the hope that had once been so high within
me began to sicken and leave me downcast and despondent. From

without, came the din of fighting. Already Phorenice had sent her
troops to storm the passageway, and the Priests who defended it

were shattering them with volleys of rocks. But these sounds of
war woke no pulse within me. If Nais did not wake, then the world

for me was ended, and I had no spirit left to care who remained
uppermost. The Gods in Their due time will doubtless smite me for

this impiety. But I make a confession of it here on these sheets,
having no mind to conceal any portion of this history for the small

reason that it does me a personal discredit.
But as the hours went on, and still no flicker of life came to

lessen the dumb agony that racked me, I grew more venturesome, and
added more essences to the bath, and drugs also such as experience

had shown might wake the disused tissues into life. I watched on
with staring eyes, rubbing her wasted body now and again, and

always keeping the heat of the bath at a constant. From the first
I had barred the door against all who would have come near to help

me. With my own hands I had laid my love to sleep, and I could not
bear that others should rouse her, if indeed roused she should ever

be. But after those first offers, no others came, and the snarl
and din of fighting told of what occupied them.

It is hard to take note of small changes which occur with
infinite slowness when one is all the while on the tense watch, and

high strung though my senses were, I think there must have been
some indication of returning life shown before I was keen enough to

notice it. For of a sudden, as I gazed, I saw a faint rippling on
the surface of the water of the bath. Gods! Would it come back

again to my love at last--this life, this wakefulness? The ripple
died out as it had come, and I stooped my head nearer to the bath

to try if I could see some faint heaving of her bosom some small
twitching of the limbs. No, she lay there still without even a

flutter of movement. But as I watched, surely it seemed to my
aching eyes that some tinge was beginning to warm that blank

whiteness of skin?
How I filled myself with that sight. The colour was returning

to her again beyond a doubt. Once more the dried blood was
becoming fluid and beginning again to course in its old channels.

Her hair floated out in the liquid of the bath like some brown
tangle of the ocean weed, and ever and again it twitched and eddied

to some impulse which in itself was too small for the eye to see.
She had slept for nine long years, and I knew that the

wakening could be none of the suddenest. Indeed, it came by its
own gradations and with infinite slowness, and I did not dare do