Through absolute darkness she sank down into a land of chaotic nightmare horrors. Great bells clanged maddeningly. Impish hands plucked at her garments, dragged her hair. She was hurried this way and that, bruised, torn, and tossed helpless upon a sea of liquid brass. Through vast avenues lined with yellow, immobile Chinese faces she was borne upon a bier. Oblique eyes looked into hers. Knives which glittered greenly in the light of lamps globular and suspended in immeasurable space, were hurled at her in showers.... Sir Lucien stood before her, supporting her; and all the knives buried themselves in his body. She tried to cry out, but no sound could she utter. Darkness fell again.... A Chinaman was bending over her. His hands were tucked in his loose sleeves. He smiled, and his smile was hideous but friendly. He was strangely like Sin Sin Wa, save that he did not lack an eye. Rita found herself lying in an untidy bed in a room laden with opium fumes and dimly lighted. On a table beside her were the remains of a meal. She strove to recall having partaken of food, but was unsuccessful.... There came a blank—then a sharp, stabbing pain in her right arm. She thought it was the knife, and shrieked wildly again and again.... Years seemingly elapsed, years of agony spent amid oblique eyes which floated in space unattached to any visible body, amid reeking fumes and sounds of ceaseless conflict. Once she heard the cry of some bird, and thought it must be the parakeet which eternally sat on a branch of a lonely palm in the heart of the Great Sahara.... Then, one night, when she lay shrinking from the plucking yellow hands which reached out of the darkness: “Tell me your dream,” boomed a deep, mocking voice; “and I will read its portent!” She opened her eyes. She lay in the untidy bed in the room which was laden with the fumes of _chandu_. She stared upward at the low, dirty ceiling. “Why do you come to _me_ with your stories of desperation?” continued the mocking voice. “You have insisted upon seeing me. I am here.” Rita managed to move her head so that she could see more of the room. On a divan at the other end of the place, propped up by a number of garish cushions, Rita beheld Mrs. Sin. The long bamboo pipe had fallen from her listless fingers. Her face wore an expression of mystic rapture, like that characterizing the features of some Chinese Buddhas.... In the other corner of the divan, contemplating her from under heavy brows, sat _Kazmah_.... CHAPTER XXXVI. SAM TÛK MOVES