Till then rest you all, and prepare to face that fearful thing--the Truth." While the Hesea still spoke the silvery curtains swung to their place as mysteriously as they had opened.

Then, as though at some signal, the black-robed priests advanced.

Surrounding Atene, they led her from the Sanctuary, accompanied by her uncle the Shaman, who, as it seemed to me, either through fatigue or fear, could scarcely stand upon his feet, but stood blinking his dim eyes as though the light dazed him.

When these were gone, the priests and priestesses, who all this time had been ranged round the walls, far out of hearing of our talk, gathered themselves into their separate companies, and still chanting, departed also, leaving us alone with Oros and the corpse of the Khan, which remained where it had been set down.
Now the head-priest Oros beckoned to us to follow him, and we went also.

Nor was I sorry to leave the place, for its death-like loneliness--enhanced, strangely enough, as it was, by the flood of light that filled it; a loneliness which was concentrated and expressed in the awful figure stretched upon the bier, oppressed and overcame us, whose nerves were broken by all that we had undergone.