Maria-Teresa opened her eyes. What was this dream from which she had awakened, or into which she had fallen? Little Christobal’s plaintive voice brought her keen realization of the brutal truth. She held out her arms to the child, but felt neither his kisses nor his tears on her face. Her eyes were still heavy with magic sleep, and she opened them with difficulty.

When, gradually, she came out of the abyss of darkness and dreams into which she could be plunged almost instantly by the sacred sachets always ready in the hideous fists of the three living mummies; the mammaconas, too, had terrible perfumes which they burned round her in precious vases, sandia more pungent than incense, more hallucinating than opium, which transformed the Bride of the Sun into a beautiful living statue. Then they could sing their songs uninterruptedly, for Maria-Teresa had gone to another world, and heard nothing of what happened about her.

Curiously enough, her spirit then carried her back to the hour when the knock had come at her window in Callao and when, dropping the big green register to the floor, she had run to meet Dick. She was worried, too, by the everpresent memory of an unfinished letter to their agent in Antwerp, which she had been writing when that other knock at the window had sent her running to Dick again. She remembered with horrible distinctness the appearance of the three living mummies, swaying in the darkness, and the feel on her mouth and face of the hands made parchment-like by the eternal night of the catacombs. Waking from this lethargic slumber, she thought she had shaken off a dream, but when her eyes opened, she no longer knew whether she had not just entered into a terrible dreamland.

When Maria-Teresa opened her eyes this time, she was in the House of the Serpent. She knew, for the mammaconas had told her, that when she, awoke there she would be near unto death. There it was that Huayna Capac, father of the last King of the Incas, would come to fetch the bride offered to Atahualpa, and take her with him to the Enchanted Realms of the Sun. In the lucid moments left to her during the voyage, when she was given the nectar that kept her alive, the mammaconas had taught her the duties of the Bride, and the first principles of the faith to which she was to be sacrificed.

At first, Maria-Teresa had hoped that she would be happy enough to lose her reason, or that the terrible fever which took her would free the troubled soul before the body was taken to martyrdom. But the mammaconas knew the secrets which cure such fevers, and had given her to drink a reddish liquid, chanting the while: “Fever has spread over you its poisoned robe. The hated race shall never know our secrets, but our love for Atahualpa’s bride is greater than our hatred. Drink and be well, in the name of Atahualpa, who awaits thee!”

So she had returned to life, only to die again, and so, a nerveless statue, she had traveled right across Peru, to the little adobe house at Arequipa, the last stopping-place before the House of the Serpent. There she had seen Huascar for the first time, bearing in his arms something covered with a veil. Careless of all the listening ears about her, she had risen, and called to him as to a savior. He had answered: “Thou belongest to the Sun, but before he takes you, thou shalt have a great joy. Thou shalt see thy little brother again.” Then he lifted the veil and showed her Christobal, sleeping. She had run forward, while he had retreated in terror. None but the appointed may touch the Bride of the Sun, and the three guardians of the Temple were there, armed, and swaying gently. One of them signed to a mammacona, who carried the sleeping boy to his sister; she burst into tears, for the first time since her captivity. The child opened his eyes and clung to her, sobbing, “Maria-Teresa! Maria-Teresa!”

“How did he come here? You would not hurt him!”

“We shall do as he wishes. He came to us, not we to him. He himself shall decide his fate. Let him beware of his words. That is all I can say to you, all I can do for you. Is that not so, ye Guardians of the T............