His arms were light upon her, his voice low and lulling. He dared not yet touch his lips to her hair--though they were dry and twisted with his awful thirst. Craft and patience altogether feline was in the art with which he wound and wove about her mind thoughts of his own, designed to ignite the spark of responsive desire.... And how softly he fanned--(an incautious blast would have left him in darkness altogether)--until it caught.... Well, indeed, he knew the cunning of the yet unbroken seals; and better still did he know the outraged forces hovering all about her, ready to defeat him for the slightest error--and leave him to burn in his own fires. "This is peace," he whispered with indescribable repression. "How soft a resting-place--and yet how strong!... Out of the past I have come for you. Do you remember the rock in the desert on which you sat and waited long ago? Your eyes were weary when I came--weary from the blazing light of noon and the endless waning of that long day. On a great rock in the desert you sat--until I came, _until I came_. Then you laughed because I shut the feverish sun-glow from your strained eyes.... Remember, I came in the skin of a lion and shut the sunset from your aching eyes--my shoulders darkening the west--and we were alone--and the night came on...." Clearly was transferred to hers, the picture in his own brain. One of the ancient and mystic films of memory seemed brought after ages to the light--the reddening sands, the city far behind, from which she had fled to meet her hero, deep in the desert--the glow of sunset on his shoulders and in his hair, tawny as the lion's skin he wore.... The heart quickened within her; the savage ardor of that long-ago woman grew hot in her breast. Strong as a lion he was, this youth of the Sun, and fleet the night fell to cover them. She ate the dried grapes he gave her, drank deep from his skin of wine, and laughed with him in the swift descending night.... She felt his arms now, her face was upraised, her eyelids tensely shut. Downward the blood rushed, leaving her lips icy cold. She felt the muscles of his arms in her tightening fingers, and her breast rose against him. This was no Twentieth Century magician who thralled her now, but a glorious hero out of the desert sunset;--and the woman within her was as one consuming with ecstasy from a lover's last visit....