"
It had come, that "day." It had dawned when she had torn the veil
before Kazmah--and that veil had enveloped her ever since. All that
had preceded the fatal act was blotted out, blurred and indistinct;
all that had succeeded it lived eternally, passing, an endless
pageant, before her tortured mind.
The horror of the moment when she had touched the hands of the man
seated in the big ebony chair was of such kind that no subsequent
terrors had supplanted it. For those long, slim hands of the color of
old ivory were cold, rigid, lifeless--the hands of a corpse! Thus the
pageant began, and it continued as hereafter, memory and delusion
taking the stage in turn.
* * * * *
Complete darkness came.
Rita uttered a wild cry of horror and loathing, shrinking back from
the thing which sat in the ebony chair. She felt that consciousness
was slipping from her; felt herself falling, and shrieked to know
herself helpless and alone with Kazmah. She groped for support, but
found none; and, moaning, she sank down, and was unconscious of her
fall.
A voice awakened her. Someone knelt beside her in the darkness,
supporting her; someone who spoke wildly, despairingly, but with a
strange, emotional reverence curbing the passion in his voice.
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