"_You_, Lakla! You fear, perhaps, to let me tarry here too close!" Storm gathered again in the handmaiden's eyes; she forced it back.
"No," she answered, "the Silent Ones so command--and for their own purposes.

Yet do I think, Yolara, that you will have little time to feed your wickedness--tell that to Lugur--and to your Shining One!" she added slowly.
Mockery and disbelief rode high in the priestess's pose.

"Am I to return alone--like this ?" she asked.
"Nay, Yolara, nay; you shall be accompanied," said Lakla; "and by those who will guard--and _watch_--you well.

They are here even now." The hangings parted, and into the chamber came Olaf and Rador.
The priestess met the fierce hatred and contempt in the eyes of the Norseman--and for the first time lost her bravado.
"Let not _him_ go with me," she gasped--her eyes searched the floor frantically.
"He goes with you," said Lakla, and threw about Yolara a swathing that covered the exquisite, alluring body.

"And you shall pass through the Portal, not skulk along the path of the worm!" She bent to Rador, whispered to him; he nodded; she had told him, I supposed, the secret of its opening.
"Come," he said, and with the ice-eyed giant behind her, Yolara, head bent, passed out of those hangings through which, but a little before, unseen, triumph in her grasp, she had slipped.
Then Lakla came to the unhappy O'Keefe, rested her hands on his shoulders, looked deep into his eyes.
"_Did_ you woo her, even as she said ?" she asked.
The Irishman flushed miserably.
"I did not," he said.