"But where is she? I wish to see her! Lead me!"

"It is a piece of insanity!" Spendius kept saying. "She will call, her
slaves will run up, and in spite of your strength you will die!"

They reached thus the galley staircase. Matho raised his head, and
thought that he could perceive far above a vague brightness, radiant and
soft. Spendius sought to restrain him, but he dashed up the steps.

As he found himself again in places where he had already seen her, the
interval of the days that had passed was obliterated from his memory.
But now had she been singing among the tables; she had disappeared, and
he had since been continually ascending this staircase. The sky above
his head was covered with fires; the sea filled the horizon; at each
step he was surrounded by a still greater immensity, and he continued to
climb upward with that strange facility which we experience in dreams.

The rustling of the veil as it brushed against the stones recalled his
new power to him; but in the excess of his hope he could no longer tell
what he was to do; this uncertainty alarmed him.

From time to time he would press his face against the quadrangular
openings in the closed apartments, and he thought that in several of the
latter he could see persons asleep.

The last story, which was narrower, formed a sort of dado on the summit
of the terraces. Matho walked round it slowly.

A milky light filled the sheets of talc which closed the little