Pagina 140 de 439

The girl had been picking her way through some puddles of water

that had settled on the floor, and when she looked up the lights

of those ahead had disappeared. She called to them faintly and

hurried on, appalled at the thought of possibly losing them in

these dreadful underground catacombs where Stygian night forever

reigned. But her very hurry delayed her, for in her haste the

gust of her motion swept out the flame. She felt her way forward

along the wall, in a darkness such as she had never conceived

before. Nor could she know that by chance she was following the

wrong wall. Had she chosen the other her hand must have come to a

break in it which showed that a passage at that point deflected

from the drift toward the left. Unconsciously she passed this,

already frightened but resolutely repressing her fear.

"I'll not let them know what an idiot I am. I'll not! I'll not!"

she told herself.