There were sounds of voices and of footsteps approaching, but Marishka could not move. She was prone, inert, helpless.
A woman's voice, it seemed, deep but not unsympathetic.
"It shall be as you desire, Excellency. I know what she needs."
Arms raised her, and she felt herself half led, half carried, into the house and laid upon a bed in a room upstairs. It was dark within and there was a strange odor of spices. Presently someone, the woman, it seemed, gave her something to drink, and after awhile the turmoil in her head grew less--and she slept.
Dreams, colorful and strangely vivid, but not unpleasant. It seemed that Marishka lay upon a couch so soft that she sank deliciously without end to perfect rest. Above, about, below her, perfumed darkness, spangled with soft spots of light, which came and went curiously. She tried to fix her gaze upon one of them, but it was extinguished immediately and appeared elsewhere. She found another--and another, but they fled from her like _ignes fatui_. She heard the whir of a machine, fast and then slow again, near and then at a distance. Was it an automobile or an aeroplane? The notion of an automobile speeding in space was incongruous, the milky way--a queer concept! She smiled in her dreams.... Then suddenly a bright sunlight peopled with strange figures in fez and turban, faces that leered at her, lips that howled in excitement, arms that moved threateningly, dust, noise, commotion, from which she was trying in vain to escape.... And then darkness again and the subdued murmur of voices, one voice familiar, one gruff and unfamiliar.
"Ten thousand _kroner_--that is a large sum," said the gruff voice.
"Yours, Effendi, if the thing is accomplished."
"It should not be difficult. You may reply upon me."
"And you are to show the lady every attention--every comfort----"
There was a recurrence of the changing lights and the voices receded. Presently she seemed to hear them again.
"She is to be kept in seclusion of course, but otherwise you will accede to all her requests--all, you understand----Should she care to write--you will send a message. There are more ways than one to kill a goose. And this one lays the golden egg, Effendi----"
"Very good--perhaps tonight----We shall see."