So I had no valid reason, no excuse for wishing to leave the valley. Indeed, strive as I might to analyze my mind, to psychoanalyze myself, I could not discover why I still longed to return to my own people, my own country. And yet I did. I was uneasy, discontented, and chafed at my enforced stay in the valley. But such is human nature. I had gone through hardships, sufferings, dangers, to find Mictolan. I had succeeded. I had found love, happiness--everything man longs for, strives for and holds dear--and yet I was as anxious to get away from the place as I had been to reach it. Possibly it was merely the inherited, ineradicable homing instinct of human beings. Perhaps some sixth sense warned me of impending disaster, or it may be that my scientific instinct, my desire to give the world the benefit of my discoveries was at the bottom of my unrest. However that may be, always, at the back of my brain, was the desire, the longing to escape, and not an hour passed that I did not glance, expectantly, at the temple, hoping each time to see the lambent fire that would mark the time for my safe escape with Itza. CHAPTER XV Nohul Voh’s Warning I HAD begun to think that the Bridge of Light had vanished forever. That as soon as I had appeared as the bearer of the Book of Kukulcan, the amazing span had ceased to exist, or that old Kinchi Haman--if as I suspected he controlled it--had some ulterior motive in preventing me or anyone else from leaving the valley. Although I had seen so many inexplicable and incredible happenings, although I had had indisputable proofs of the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies, I had not yet become so convinced of their inspired origin or so weaned from my faith in hard and fast scientific facts, that I could accept matters as did the Mayas. Although I did not pretend--even to my own mind--to explain many things, especially the Bridge of Light, yet not for a moment did I believe it supernatural. Either it was some natural, if inexplicable and entirely new, phenomenon, or else it was some equally inexplicable device of man.