Slowly, as in a theatre, when dark veils are lifted one by one to simulate a gradual dawn, before Brion’s eyes, as they accustomed themselves to the gloom, came into shadowy being the shapes and forms about him. He stood, he saw, in a low vaulted chamber, a score of armed men surrounding him and the two who held him captive. Narrow shafts ran up into the groining of the roof, against one of which lolled he who had spoken in his ear, and who appeared to be the captain of the party. His conductor had disappeared--presumably to notify some one of his seizure--and silence and stagnation prevailed, pending, it seemed, the messenger’s return. The occasional clearing of a throat or the shuffle of a foot on the stone flags were the only sounds to break the dead stillness. Somewhere in front of him, and above the level of his eyes, a vertical line of silver, the merest thread, seemed to denote the presence of heavy curtains, shrouding the way into the inner recesses of the house; and on that line he fixed his attention. He had made one attempt to break the silence, and had been roughly bidden by the officer to hold his tongue or he would be incontinently gagged. And so he stood mute, but raging in his heart over the damnable treachery which had been used to draw him into this snare. His one grain of comfort lay in Clerivault’s safety. Of that he was now convinced: the story had been devised, he saw, merely to entrap and secure him--how devised, with what intention and on what information, it were idle to speculate. He knew enough of the man into whose clutches, he never had a doubt, he had fallen, to know that he never lacked for agents and abettors in any sinister business he had on hand. But, for all that, it was nothing less than his own vanity and headstrong will which were responsible for this trouble. Clerivault had foreseen truly, and he had flouted in his conceit the faithful seer. Like a child he had blundered into the trap, and now he must pay the penalty for his obstinate folly--with what? It was that thought which most maddened him--his real simplicity, and the self-sufficiency which had made it vulnerable to a blatant imposture. His passion rose with his sense of humiliation. Was no course left to him but submission to the unknown force which held him here imprisoned? Better the risk of a dash for freedom than a surrender so spiritless. The door by which he had entered was behind him. Barred and bolted, there was no hope of escape that way. But--what the curtains hid--if he could once gain the intricacies of the house beyond!