“We were gathered in this room to kill ourselves, but within my heart I knew I intended to do no such thing. For while they pricked themselves with a poisoned needle, I was going to pretend to do so, and when they had died I meant to make my escape. Determining thus, I had thrust my poisoned needle deeply out of sight into the earth, in the garden of the palace. “Now in my dream I looked around me. There was no sound in the room but a soft moaning, and I saw shrouded forms lying on low couches, wrapped round with silk. “I lay on a great bed, and close beside me lay the youngest queen, and I dreamed that her name was Ayilmah. Her voice was speaking to me very quietly, in the dusk of that darkened room. “‘Where hast thou pricked thyself?’ she was saying. “‘In the slender part of my wrist,’ I answered, lyingly, and I dreamed she expressed great sorrow at my words. “‘Oh, why hast thou done it there?’ she cried. ‘Dost thou not know that the pain will grow and grow, till at last it will get past bearing. And death tarries while the pain grows. Why didst thou do it there? Dost thou not suffer exceedingly?’ “And I, in my dream, replied once more lyingly: ‘My life is already so numb within me that I feel no pain.’ Then I thought she put her hand into mine to comfort me, and even as her fingers closed round mine, I felt her hand’s warmth, and the movement of it, cease. Hurriedly I slipped my hand higher, and I found her arm was chill, and now the rounded fingers in mine were cold like small columns of polished jade. “Then I knew she lay dead beside me, and suddenly I was filled with a great awe. I started up and cried, ‘Listen, I have done you a great wrong.’ But everything was very quiet. There was no answer to my words. “Then I knew that in that room I alone was living, and a great horror overwhelmed me, a great fear. “I moved from the couch where I was lying, my feet caught and held, by the wrappings of the bed. “Freeing them, I crept through the warm, scented darkness, between the couches of the queens. Very quietly they lay there in the stillness, and the light the silver lamps gave out through their fretted sides, was so dim that I could barely see the heavy curtains hiding the walls. I drew the curtains aside, seeking an outlet, but everywhere my hands fell on the smooth surface of the wall. “Then I knew that what had been a chamber for the living had been sealed into a tomb, for it had been thought, that knowing the law, the five queens had dealt faithfully. And with this knowledge my life maddened within me, and I tore the curtains down. Stumbling over the heaps of fallen draperies I sped forward, seeking with frenzied hands. I laid both hands flat out against the wall, passionately seeking. “But there was no opening, no door. “Only the dead were free. And I, who had planned so cunningly. “The silver lamps moved slightly as they hung.” CHAPTER XVI