With a movement too quick for the eye to follow, his hand closed about her round throat, lightly as a caress. 'Not a sound out of you!' he muttered. Her smooth ivory flesh was cold as marble, yet there was no fear in the wide, dark, marvelous eyes which regarded him. 'Do not fear,' she answered calmly. 'I will not betray you. But are you mad to come, a stranger and a foreigner, to the forbidden temple of Set?' 'I'm looking for the priest Thutothmes,' he answered. 'Is he in this temple?' 'Why do you seek him?' she parried. 'He has something of mine which was stolen.' 'I will lead you to him,' she volunteered so promptly that his suspicions were instantly roused. 'Don't play with me, girl,' he growled. 'I do not play with you. I have no love for Thutothmes.' He hesitated, then made up his mind; after all, he was as much in her power as she was in his. 'Walk beside me,' he commanded, shifting his grasp from her throat to her wrist. 'But walk with care. If you make a suspicious move--' She led him down the slanting corridor, down and down, until there were no more cressets, and he groped his way in darkness, aware less by sight than by feel and sense of the woman at his side. Once when he spoke to her, she turned her head toward him and he was startled to see her eyes glowing like golden fire in the dark. Dim doubts and vague monstrous suspicions haunted his mind, but he followed her, through a labyrinthine maze of black corridors that confused even his primitive sense of direction. He mentally cursed himself for a fool, allowing himself to be led into that black abode of mystery; but it was too late to turn back now. Again he felt life and movement in the darkness about him, sensed peril and hunger burning impatiently in the blackness. Unless his ears deceived him he caught a faint sliding noise that ceased and receded at a muttered command from the girl. She led him at last into a chamber lighted by a curious seven-branched candelabrum in which black candles burned weirdly. He knew they were far below the earth. The chamber was square, with walls and ceiling of polished black marble and furnished after the manner of the ancient Stygians; there was a couch of ebony, covered with black velvet, and on a black stone dais lay a carven mummy-case. Conan stood waiting expectantly, staring at the various black arches which opened into the chamber. But the girl made no move to go farther. Stretching herself on the couch with feline suppleness, she intertwined her fingers behind her sleek head and regarded him from under long drooping lashes. 'Well?' he demanded impatiently. 'What are you doing? Where's Thutothmes?' 'There is no haste,' she answered lazily. 'What is an hour--or a day, or a year, or a century, for that matter? Take off your mask. Let me see your features.' With a grunt of annoyance Conan dragged off the bulky headpiece, and the girl nodded as if in approval as she scanned his dark scarred face and blazing eyes.