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 In the pitchy darkness his flaming wings were distinctly visible. And on she went descending; thick clouds of dust, the deepest shadows of Emeralda’s transitoriness, rose up, but she kept breathing, never hesitating, and her foot felt instinctively the next step, and she struck at the bats and fought with the vampires. When she throttled them, a human cry was heard, and the echo sounded a thousand times like the anxious cry of a murder. But she was not afraid. She kept on descending. . ..

She kept descending. At last she felt no more steps but voidness under her feet, and she sank. . . . like a feather, through heavier air; she sank, she sank deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper. . . . A black draught of air, an invisible wind, damp and chill, made her feel that she had passed all the pits, that she was sinking outside them in the open air, invisible and black, thick as ink. Then she began to sink more slowly, and. . . . her feet touched ground.

Sounds soft and low, like the plaintive strains of a viol, rose up from afar, like music of the sea, the plaint of a thousand voices which never became melody.