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"Leave this place," she said, with a voice of fear; "leave it, or the hour will have passed; leave it, if you would see me again! I ask you, who may never ask again; go now, before the moments fly!"

And she left me as she had come. But I remained, drinking from the goblet, mystified and unnerved, until the bell of the sphinx-like clock rang out and the first hour of night chimed. I listened to the hour—it was seven o'clock; and the seventh stroke had not died away in echo when the tent under which I sat dropped upon me, and I felt its folds being bound about my body. It was the work of a moment, and I lay helpless as a log, bound hand and foot, and in black darkness. But I knew that men carried me, and I heard a door clang before silence fell.

They had uncovered my head from the folds of the silver-cloth when they laid me in the room, and they loosened the bonds of my body. I was unbound save at the left hand, which was chained—as I judged by touch—to a cube of iron. But all the room was dark, and I lay for many hours, cold and shivering, upon a floor of stone. When the light came at last it was from an arc lamp high above me, and I saw that my surmise had been right. I was in a cell of stone, bare and cold, without window or furniture, and my left hand was chained