Yet what hideous mockery was such freedom! I realized that I could venture no step beyond the door of the lodge without becoming the focus of spying eyes; that all about was evidence of the despotic power of this renegade white queen, who deigned to spare me merely because she deemed I was utterly powerless to interfere with her cruel purposes.

Saint Andrew! it was an environment of evil to chill the blood of any man, nor amid its gathering gloom could I distinguish any gleam promising dawn.

About us watched impatiently a horde of ruthless savages, eager to make us victims of their torture, held back temporarily only by the imperious will of this self-styled "Daughter of the Sun," who ruled through appeal to their grossest superstitions.
She, I believed, in spite of fair face and evidences of culture, was as vindictive, barbarous, and relentless as the wildest in that savage band.
Over and over I turned such unhappy thoughts in my seething brain, until the faintest sound from without had died away.

I may have spent hours thus, while De Noyan slept on peacefully as a tired child.

At last a wild desire for action overcame my lassitude, conquered all lingering discretion.