He spoke only when Helmor had paused. "Thou didst lift the infant in thy arms, and Kalamita fled from before thee, shrieking?" "Aye." Helmor inclined his head. "In which is the meaning plain," said Gazar. "Let Helmor watch closely this woman, sister to him who captains all Zollaria's army--and let him guard closely the child of the Tamarizian Mouthpiece lest harm come upon it through her, who hating the father because of a personal slight put upon her in the past, thirsts now for an act of revenge." Helmor nodded. "Gazar's words seem words of wisdom," he rejoined, narrowing his eyes, and recalling, as Croft fancied, Kalamita's scarcely veiled displeasure at his placing Naia and Jason under guard in the palace, her more recent suggestion concerning the sacrifice of the child. "How says he? Were this dream a vision?" "Perchance," replied Gazar slowly. "It beareth the seeming of it. Were it to be repeated, Helmor should deem it such beyond all doubt." "Aye and will," said the Zollarian monarch. "If it comes again, I shall safeguard the child, placing a double watch upon it, and also upon this woman, whose beauty is too great to fail to sway men's minds." Gazar appeared to consider. "'Twere well to do so," he agreed at length. "The past sun it came to my ears that since her return she has visited the house of Ptah." "Ptah?" Helmor stiffened. "Now, by Bel himself, he appeared in my dream--those together." "Aye," the soothsayer made answer. Gazar did not miss the point. It was as but the naming of something already known. As in his sleep Helmor contracted the fingers of a hand. His lips set. His expression became one of determination. "Now, by Bel," he declared, "shall I indeed have this insolent beauty watched. May Adita withdraw her favor from her for first having induced me to harken to her plans. Gazar, I am half-minded that he himself has shown me his pleasure, since, even though I myself have vowed him the child did Tamarizia refuse our demands or seek to win him from us, yet should she attack with her present weapons, not even Bel might save our armies from them, had we not the infant itself to place in her hands. Go. I shall ponder these things deeply. More lies within this vision than the fancies of a sleep-dulled brain." Croft quitted the chamber as Gazar turned to leave it. He was wholly satisfied with his success and through it that Helmor, though superstitious, held, even as Ptah had declared on the day before, none too great a respect for his gods. Wherefore, he was determined that the succeeding night would see the dream repeated with far less effort since now the pictures of its sequence were printed on the surfaces of Helmor's mind, and the man would go to his couch, considering the likelihood of his dreaming again.