Kendric turned from stone and knife and human relics and looked with strange new wonder at Zoraida. She claimed kin with the royalty of this ancient order; perhaps her claim was just. He had wondered if she were mad; was not his answer now given him? Was she not after all that not uncommon thing called a throw-back, a reversion to an ancestral type? If in fact there flowed in her veins the blood of that princess of the golden king of Tezcuco who could have smiled at the whisperings of her lord and the tender cadences of music floating through the gardens his love had made for her, while just here his priests made their sacrifices and she, turning her eyes from his ardent ones, now and then languorously watched--was Zoraida mad or was she simply ancient Aztec or Toltec or Tezcucan, born four or five hundred years after her time? Her slow smile now as she watched him and no doubt read at least a portion of what lay in his mind, was baffling; he might have been looking back through the long dead years upon the Tezcucan's princess: in her eyes were tender passion and a glint that might have been a reflection of light from the sacrificial knife. Speculation aside, here was one point which Zoraida herself had vouched for: since girlhood she had been accustomed to coming here. It would appear inevitable that the atmosphere of the place would have deeply influenced young fancies; that what she was now was largely due to these conflicting influences. What wonder that she saw nothing unlikely in her dreamings of herself as queen of a newly created empire? All that Zoraida was, all that she did, all that she threatened to do, the passion and the regal manner and the look of a naked knife in her eyes, was but to be expected. Zoraida led on and he followed. Their way led toward the stonework he had glimpsed through the shrubs and vines. Here was a many-roomed building, walls richly carved into records of ancient feasts and glories, battles and triumphs. They passed in through a wide entrance; within the walls were lined with satiny hardwoods, the panels chosen with nice regard to color and grain. Doors opened to right and left and ahead, giving views of other chambers on some walls of which still hung ancient cloths; there were chairs and tables and benches and chests. Zoraida went on, straight ahead and to the doorway of a much larger, high-vaulted chamber. And again was Kendric treated to a fresh surprise.