Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/214

 whistling through the fuchsia trees, making each bell-shaped blossom tinkle like innumerable short, sharp sighs. It was a dream, remember! I rose from my couch and went out beneath the solitary alleys of the park; not even Sen-tur walked by my side. I felt unspeakably lonely and desolate, and the darkness weighed upon me like a pall. Suddenly I felt that some one … something took my hand, while a voice whispered, 'Come!' I followed, and the unseen hand guided me over the canals and cities of Kamt, above those hills yonder which mark the boundaries of the living world, and right across the valley of death, where, in the darkness, I heard the cry of the carrion and the moaning of the dying souls."

She stood—a quaint, rigid, infinitely graceful image—dimly outlined in the gloom, slightly bent forward as if her eyes were trying to meet through the darkness those of Hugh fixed upon her. I could see his tall figure, very straight, with arms crossed over his chest, and I longed to take him away, far from this strange and voluptuous girl whose every motion was poetry and every word an intoxicating charm.

"I knew that the valley of death lay at my feet," she resumed in the same monotonous, sing-song tone, dreamy and low. "I knew that all round me was desolation, sorrow and waste, but I did not see it, for my eyes sought the distance beyond, and what I saw there, far away, was so glorious and fair, that ever since my memory has dwelt upon that vision and my feet longed to wander there again."

"What didst thou see?"

"I saw a bower of tangled flowers drooping beneath the sun, whose rays I thought I had never seen so glorious and so hot, and between the roses and the lilies, the laurel and the mimosa, innumerable birds chirruped