“Yet am I not even more of a neophyte?” interrupted the girl as she selected a wafer from the tray before her.

“Nevertheless, I shall reveal to you, as I promised, the innermost secrets; you shall enter the adytum, the awful holy of holies.”

“But, Etienne, you must explain. Who is this peacock, and what is his significance?”

Who, indeed, was the peacock? I forgot, for the moment, that the bound and gagged sentry might be discovered by the departing communicants, thus betraying the fact that someone had intruded. Still, it had taken me ten minutes to enter; and they, going upgrade, up flights of steps, would require more time. And should they return, they would search each passageway, taking their time, in all thoroughness, probably twenty minutes or half an hour.

Well then, and what was that glittering bird whose image had caused the warder to bow and kiss my left hand?

“The peacock,” explained the Marquis, answering the girl, as well as myself, “is the symbol of him we serve—Malik Taûs, which in the Persian signifies ‘Lord Peacock.’”

“Which explains exactly nothing, Etienne!”

“Malik Taûs,” he repeated, as one who humors a captivating but unruly child, “is none other than he whom they call Ahriman … Lucifer, the Morning Star … Satan, the outlaw, he whom we, the rebels, the battered but unvanquished ones serve. Now do you understand?”

Eavesdropping on devil-worship! What next?

And La Belle Allzaneau smiled her slow, enigmatic smile, unterrified at that which made me shudder.

Thus, as they ate and drank, the Marquis explained the monstrous scenes depicted on the cornices, Oriental perversions antedating Malik Taûs, the girl interrupting from time to time. I watched and wondered.

Very curious it was that their voices seemed to come from my right clearly, but as from a greater distance than the speakers seemed to be. It was as if I were watching some phantasmagoria. Her voice I heard as her lips parted; but it seemed to come not from her lips, but from my right.

And then it struck me as odd that they both were left-handed. Both ate left-handed, picked up their goblets with their left hands. The Marquis, striking a match, struck it with his left. Was this left-handedness another manifestation of the rites of Malik Taûs, or was it but coincidence that both the girl and her host were left-handed?

“This is an ancient shrine,” continued the Marquis, his voice clear, but coming not from in front of me, down a long, narrow passage, but seemingly from my right. “This is an ancient shrine in which Mithra was worshiped by Roman legionaries; and renegade Moslems and those who followed the Moorish forces into Spain bowed here before Tanit, and Istar, Mylitta, and Anaïtis, all of whom are one, one goddess who came out of Egypt … Isis, the Great Goddess.