Yes, there we stood, by that very pillar behind which the angel had waited for us with her demon. There was her lamp, lantern rather, and dark, save for a mere slit. I looked at it and looked all around. "We saw _two lights_," I said. "And yet she was waiting for us here _alone_." "There certainly were two lights, Bill; in other words, there certainly were two persons at least. Her companion went somewhere; that is the only explanation that I can think of." "I wonder where," said I, "and what for." "Help, in all likelihood. You know, Bill, I have an idea that, if we had delayed much longer, our reception there," and he waved a hand toward the bridge, "would have been a very different one." "It was interesting enough to suit me. And, as it is, Heaven only knows what is to follow. This is, perhaps, just the beginning of things." The angel, standing there straight and still, was watching us intently, so strange a look in her eyes--those eyes were blue--that a chill passed through my heated brain, and I actually began to wonder if I was being hypnotized. Hypnotized? And in this cursed spot. I turned my look straight into the eyes of the angel, and, as I looked, I flung a secret curse at that strange weakness of mine and called myself a fool for having entertained, even for a fleeting moment, a thought so absurd. Rhodes had noticed, and he turned his look upon me and upon the woman--this creature so indescribably lovely and yet with so indefinable, mysterious a Sibylline something about her. For some moments there was silence. I thought that I saw fear in those blue eyes of hers, but I could not be sure. That strange look, whether one of fear or of something else, was not all that I saw there; but I strove in vain to find a name or a meaning for what I saw. Science, science! This was the age of science, the age of the jet-plane, the atom-bomb, radium, television and radio; and yet here was a scene to make Science herself rub her eyes in amazement, a scene that might have been taken right out of some wild story or out of some myth of the ancient world. Well, that ancient world too had its science, some of which science, I fear (though this thought would have brought a pooh-pooh from Milton Rhodes) man has lost to his sorrow. And, like that ancient world, so perhaps had this strange underground world which we had entered--or, rather, were trying to enter. And perhaps of that science or some phases of it, this angel before us had fearful command. One moment I told myself that we should need all the courage we possessed, all the ingenuity and resource of that science of which Milton Rhodes himself was the master; the next, that I was letting my imagination overleap itself and run riot. My thoughts were suddenly broken by the voice of Milton: "Goodness, Bill, look at her hand. I forgot."