Sherburne did not answer. Anger, distrust, wretchedness, the spirit of
the alien, loneliness, were alive in him. The magnetism of this deep
penetrating man, possessed of a devil, was on him, and in spite of every
reasonable instinct he turned to him for companionship.

"It's been a failure," he burst out, "and I'm sick of it--sick of it; but
I can't give it up."

Pierre said nothing. They had come to what seemed a vast semicircle of
ice and snow, a huge amphitheatre in the plains. It was wonderful: a
great round wall on which the northern lights played, into which the
stars peered. It was open towards the north, and in one side was a
fissure shaped like a Gothic arch. Pierre pointed to it, and they did not
speak till they had passed through it. Like great seats the steppes of
snow ranged round, and in the centre was a kind of plateau of ice, as it
might seem a stage or an altar. To the north there was a great opening,
the lost arc of the circle, through which the mystery of the Pole swept
in and out, or brooded there where no man may question it. Pierre stood
and looked. Time and again he had been here, and had asked the same
question: Who had ever sat on those frozen benches and looked down at the
drama on that stage below? Who played the parts? Was it a farce or a
sacrifice? To him had been given the sorrow of imagination, and he
wondered and wondered. Or did they come still--those strange people,
whoever they were--and watch ghostly gladiators at their fatal sport? If
they came, when was it? Perhaps they were there now unseen. In spite of
himself he shuddered. Who was the keeper of the house?

Through his mind there ran--pregnant to him for the first tine--a chanson
of the Scarlet Hunter, the Red Patrol, who guarded the sleepers in the
Kimash Hills against the time they should awake and possess the land once