St. George drew the stopper. In an instant an odour, spicy, penetrating, delicious, saluted him and gave life to the dead air of the room. For a moment he hesitated. He knew that the flask had not been among Amory's belongings and that he himself had never seen it before. But the odour was, he thought, unmistakable, and so powerful that already he felt as if the liquor were racing through his own veins. He touched it to his lips; it was like a full draught of some marvelous elixir. Sudden confidence sat upon St. George, and thanking his guiding stars for the fortunate chance, he unhesitatingly set the flask to the old man's lips. There was a long-drawn, shuddering breath, a fluttering of the eyelids, a movement of the limbs, and after that old Malakh lay quite still upon the stones. Once more St. George thrust his hand within the bosom of the loose robe, and the heart was beating rapidly and regularly and with amazing force. In a moment deep breaths succeeded one another, filling the breast of the unconscious man; but the eyelids did not unclose, and St. George took up the taper and bent to scan the quiet face. St. George looked, and sank to his knees and looked again, holding the light now here, now there, and peering in growing bewilderment. What he saw he was wholly unable to define. It was as if a mask were slowly to dissolve and yet to lie upon the features which it had covered, revealing while it still made mock of concealing. Colour was in the lips, colour was stealing into the changed face. The _changed_ face--changed, St. George could not tell how; and the longer he looked, and though he rubbed his eyes and turned them toward the dark and then looked again, moving the taper, he could neither explain nor define what had happened. He set the candle on the floor and sprang away from the quiet figure, searching the dark. The great silent place, with its shoulders of sarcophagi jutting from the gloom was black save for the little ring of pallid light about that prostrate form. St. George sent his hand to his forehead, and shook himself a bit, and straightened his shoulders with a smile. "It must be the stuff you've tasted," he addressed himself solemnly. "Heaven knows what it was. It's the stuff you've tasted."