It was, by the scorings on the wall, the sixth night of my captivity. That day I had been prey to the longest and severest attack of mental anguish yet, but at what I take to have been about nine in the evening, this had suddenly lifted, leaving me in a buoyancy of spirit likewise more pronounced than I had known from the beginning. I had retired to bed, and lay for a long time wondering whether this abrupt lightening of the gloom meant that I was to be tortured no further, when a female figure noiselessly entered my room. The bedchamber, I may say, was at the side of the house, and was illuminated during daytime by a window of open marble tracery built into the wall, through which the beams of the moon, now nearing the full, eerily filtered. The woman glided towards me, and stood so close that I had no difficulty in recognising her as the maiden of Poyning's adventure on the last night we spent together. 'Princess Helene!' I gasped. Her wonderful features broke into a smile. 'You have mistaken me, stranger,' she whispered. 'I am Euphrosune, wife of the Prince. Hearken! You have been in great danger, and you are in great danger still. You cannot fail to know that attempts have been made to kill you?' 'Only too well,' I said. 'Tell me, was it Kalliboas?' 'We will speak no ill of Kalliboas,' she replied solemnly. 'Kalliboas is dead. Seek not the manner of his death, for these are terrible matters and not good to be spoken of.' 'And Poyning?' 'The little one lives. My sister loves the little one, and no harm will befall him so long as we three, the Prince and my sister and I, live to shield him. But there are grave perils that beset us all. Your coming to the city from the great world without has set our rulers one against the other: we are in the cross-currents of a stormy sea. It is well that you should leave us, stranger.' A tremendous new hope rose in me. 'You will help me to escape?' I cried in a hoarse whisper. 'There is one thing that can enable us to do that,' she said. 'My husband has told me that among the race from whom you come, oaths are sacred. If we contrive your escape, will you swear never by word or deed, now or henceforth, to betray the existence of our country to any man of the outer world?'