hideous creature who had made way for the Veiled Woman. The grim
skeleton bowed his head submissively, and strode noiselessly away
through the long grasses--the slender stems, trampled under his
stealthy feet, relifting themselves as after a passing wind. And
thus he, too, sank out of sight down into the valley below. On the
tableland of the hill remained only we three--Margrave, myself, and
the Veiled Woman.

She had reseated herself apart, on the gray crag above the dried
torrent. He stood at the entrance of the cavern, round the sides
of which clustered parasital plants, with flowers of all colors,
some among them opening their petals and exhaling their fragrance
only in the hours of night; so that, as his form filled up the jaws
of the dull arch, obscuring the moonbeam that strove to pierce the
shadows that slept within, it stood now--wan and blighted--as I had
seen it first, radiant and joyous, literally "framed in blooms."


IV


"So," said Margrave, turning to me, "under the soil that spreads
around us lies the gold which to you and to me is at this moment of
no value, except as a guide to its twin-born--the regenerator of
life!"

"You have not yet described to me the nature of the substance which
we are to explore, nor the process by which the virtues you impute
to it are to be extracted."