As if the dreadful spectacle had a fascination which they could not resist, or that their miraculous deliverance had rendered them incapable of connected thought, the destined victims had remained almost in their positions taken up previous to the arrival of Ropata and his contingent. Mrs. Summers had sunk down on a sofa which had been dislodged from its position, with her children, wondering and tearful, beside her. The female attendants of Erena were clustered around their mistress. Cyril Summers, over whom the bitterness of death had passed, stood by his wife, gazing with awe-struck eyes into the distance, while his moving lips from time to time gave token that he was returning thanks to that Almighty Being to whom he had appealed in his darkest hour. While Hypatia, wrapped in a world of strange and awful phantasy, still stood by the outer entrance of the porch, looking straight in front of her, at this weird melodrama of human life, in which the reality so often transcends the unrealities of the "fantastic realm." Erena and Roland Massinger had preserved their position unaltered, except that, from one of support, the girl gradually sank forward, until her head rested on her lover's breast. A cry from one of the Maori girls arrested the attention of all. Hypatia, roused from her trance, rushed over to find two of them raising Erena from her reclining position, with looks of alarm, while the arterial blood which welled up from her bosom told of a mortal wound. Massinger's death-pale countenance, stained with blood, as were the coverings of his couch, seemed to denote that these lovers, thrown together by such fortuitous circumstances in life, were fated to be undivided in death. Though Massinger was unwounded by the bullet which, aimed with fatal accuracy, had pierced the bosom of Erena, his situation was most critical. For her there was no hope. The lung had been perforated; the laboured breathing showed but too truly that death was imminent. In Massinger's case the appearances were hardly more promising. The rude treatment to which he had been subjected after his capture had caused the partly healed wound to break out afresh. He was rapidly approaching the state of mortal weakness to which Erena was succumbing. Such was only too probable; but Cyril Summers, who had gone through a course of instruction in surgery, was enabled to stop his bleeding, and to afford temporary relief to Erena. Massinger at first resented the proffered aid. "Why trouble me?" he said resentfully. "She has given her life to save mine; it were base of me to survive her at such a cost. Let us die together. My life belongs to her, who has now saved it for the third time."