disappeared through the gallery, trickling moistened powder from his fingers as he went. Then, when his voice sounded back along the passage, Dolores again took Pearse by the arm and said, looking him full in the eyes: “Thy test, friend. Here am I. Out there is the grove, and beyond it the sea. Take this torch. Put light to the powder train, and thou and I will depart in the white schooner. We shall leave nothing for these vultures to fight over. But together we will go far away into thy world, thee and me.”

“And leave my friends here?” he asked, huskily.

“Ay, my man, but not alive!” she whispered, thrusting her dark, flushed face close to his, and letting her lips breathe their fragrance upon him. “They, thy friends, are not as my beasts.