lamp. She kneeled therefore, and searched with her hands, and bringing
two large pieces together, recognized the shape of the lamp. Therewith
it flashed upon her that the lamp was dead, that this brokenness was
the death of which she had read without understanding, that the
darkness had killed the lamp. What then could Falca have meant when
she spoke of the lamp _going out_? There was the lamp--dead, indeed,
and so changed that she would never have taken it for a lamp but for
the shape! No, it was not the lamp any more now it was dead, for all
that made it a lamp was gone, namely, the bright shining of it. Then
it must be the shine, the light, that had gone out! That must be what
Falca meant--and it must be somewhere in the other place in the wall.
She started afresh alter it, and groped her way to the curtain.

Now she had never in her life tried to get out, and did not know how;
but instinctively she began to move her hands about over one of the
walls behind the curtain, half expecting them to go into it, as she
supposed Watho and Falca did. But. the wall repelled her with
inexorable hardness, and she turned to the one opposite. In so doing,
she set her foot upon an ivory die, and as it met sharply the same
spot the broken alabaster had already hurt, she fell forward with her
outstretched hands against the wall. Something gave way, and she
tumbled out of the cavern.




CHAPTER IX.

OUT.