A mistiness was gathering about Hassan, and his features became obscured so that only his glittering eyes peered through. The outstretched hand was expanding; and strangely enough, it seemed fitting to Farrell that this should be so, and that there should be hazy figures, and clots of greenness appearing in the blankness above the hand. Trees were taking root. Their outlines were hazy, and through their immaterial substance he could just distinguish the jambs of the niche, and the swirling mists that veiled Hassan. The voice was now murmuring softly and compellingly. "Even in this hand I hold the Garden.... I am the keeper and the warden.... I accept and I reject...." Then that which in the back of his brain had kept Farrell from utterly succumbing to the sorcery of that murmuring voice and those burning eyes asserted itself, and he knew that it was illusion. As he sought to resist and deny, he felt a terrific impact as of a physical substance. A mighty, implacable will bludgeoned him as with hammer blows. He knew that if he continued assenting he would be for ever enslaved. "There is no Garden. It is illusion," he asserted to himself, and forced his lips to move and silently enunciate the negation. He trembled with an all-compelling fear, the awful fear of losing his very identity. That devastating will behind the cloud-veil was crushing him. How easy to assent, and end the agony! Great beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His face was drawn and haggard with the torment of his battered will. But to surrender would betray Antoinette into the hands of the enemy. "There is no Garden," he persisted. "His hand is _empty_. EMPTY. EMPTY!" He forced his last vestige of strength into that final declaration. The trees dwindled to pin-heads of green, and with them vanished the gray mists. The hand _was_ empty! Farrell sighed from mortal weariness and relief. Then he smiled triumphantly. He had withstood the terrific psychic assault that would have made him a slave, and a vassal of that old man and the murderous heritage of Asia. Hassan smiled as at an ancient jest. "You have withstood my will as no man before you," he said. "There was one who resisted to the uttermost, but he dropped dead." Hassan, the heir of Maymun the magician, the sorcerer, the heretic, took his defeat gracefully. Then his smile became ominous and mocking. "Who but you would have had the wit to slay Shirkuh, the chief of my servants, then so arrange the body of another you slew, that it would seem that they had died quarrelling over _Al Asfarani_? Subtle serpent, you erred in putting the dagger in the right hand. That Kurd was left-handed." As those words hammered home, Farrell wondered if his heart would ever again start beating. He was lost, and with him, Antoinette. Doomed by his own cunning. But thus far, no word about his imposture; therefore Farrell laughed full in Hassan's face, as became the honor of the Durani clan.