And groping out of the radiance, pausing at the verge of the dais, leaping down from it, came Larry, laughing, filled with life, blinking as one who draws from darkness into sunshine. He saw Lakla, sprang to her, gripped her in his arms. "Lakla!" he cried. "Mavourneen!" She slipped from his embrace, blushing, glancing at the Three shyly, half-fearfully. And again I saw the tenderness creep into the inky, flame-shot orbs of the woman being; and a tenderness in the others too--as though they regarded some well-beloved child. "You lay in the arms of Death, Larry," she said. "And the Silent Ones drew you from him. Do homage to the Silent Ones, Larry, for they are good and they are mighty!" She turned his head with one of the long, white hands--and he looked into the faces of the Three; looked long, was shaken even as had been Olaf and myself; was swept by that same wave of power and of--of--what can I call it?--_holiness_ that streamed from them. Then for the first time I saw real awe mount into his face. Another moment he stared--and dropped upon one knee and bowed his head before them as would a worshipper before the shrine of his saint. And--I am not ashamed to tell it--I joined him; and with us knelt Lakla and Olaf and Rador. The mist of fiery opal swirled up about the Three; hid them. And with a long, deep, joyous sigh Lakla took Larry's hand, drew him to his feet, and silently we followed them out of that hall of wonder. But why, in going, did the thought come to me that from where the Three sat throned they ever watched the cavern mouth that was the door into their abode; and looked down ever into the unfathomable depth in which glowed and pulsed that mystic flower, colossal, awesome, of green flame that had seemed to me fire of life itself? CHAPTER XXVI The Wooing of Lakla I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours--the facing of the Three. Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry's voice: "They look like birds." Evidently he was thinking of the Three; a silence--then: "Yes, they look like _birds_--and they look, and it's meaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they look like _lizards_"--and another silence--"they look like some sort of gods, and, by the good sword-arm of Brian Boru, they look human, too! And it's _none_ of them they are either, so what--what the--what the sainted St. Bridget are they?" Another short silence, and then in a tone of awed and absolute conviction: "That's it, sure! That's what they are--it all hangs in--they couldn't be anything else--" He gave a whoop; a pillow shot over and caught me across the head. "Wake up!" shouted Larry. "Wake up, ye seething caldron of fossilized superstitions! Wake up, ye bogy-haunted man of scientific unwisdom!"