Once more, out of the swathing fog, hands touched her.

"There you are! That's right. Now lean forward."

She found herself clasped by arms like steel--so strong, so sure, that
she felt as safe and secure as when Vladimir Ravinski, the amazingly
clever young Russian who partnered her in several of her dances,
sometimes lifted her, lightly and easily as a feather, and bore her
triumphantly off the stage aloft on his shoulder.

"You're very strong," she murmured, as the unknown owner of the arms
swung her down from the tilted car.

"You're not very heavy," came the answer. There was a kind of laughter
in the voice.

As the man spoke he set her down on her feet, and then, just as Magda
was opening her lips to thank him, the fog seemed to grow suddenly
denser, swirling round her in great murky waves and surging in her ears
with a noise like the boom of the ocean. Higher and higher rose the
waves, a resistless sea of blackness, and at last they swept right over
her head and she sank into the utter darkness of oblivion.



"Drink this!"

Someone was holding a glass to her lips and the pungent smell of sal
volatile pricked her nostrils. Magda shrank back, her eyes still shut,