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Updated: June 13, 2025
"I beg you," she said with an earnestness I could not understand, "I beg you to come this way," leading me to the right, for I had turned instinctively to the left in entering the gallery, perhaps because my room in Esmo's house had lain in that direction.
But he abhorred the use for pleasure's sake of poisons affirmed to reduce the activity and in the long-run to impair the energies of the mind, and weaken the moral sense and the will, more intensely than the strictest follower of the Arabian Prophet abhors the draughts which deprive man of the full use of the senses, intelligence, and conscience which Allah has bestowed, and degrade him below the brute, Esmo's children, moreover, were not more strictly compelled to respect the letter than carefully instructed in the principle of every command for which he claimed their obedience.
We passed in, guided by him, through one or two chambers, and along a passage, at the end of which a light shone through a crystal door. Here proof of Esmo's superior judgment was afforded. He would fain have had the party much smaller than it was, and composed exclusively of the very few old and experienced members of the Zinta within reach at the moment.
The presiding judge, as I took my place, read a brief telling terrible menace, expounding the legal penalties of perjury. "You will speak the truth," he said, "or you know the consequences." As he spoke, he encountered Esmo's eyes, and quailed under the gaze, sinking back into his seat motionless as the bird under the alleged fascination of the serpent.
I was glad to remember that a party of the Zveltau still awaited Esmo's return at his own residence. We drove as fast as the electric speed would carry us along the road I had traversed once before in the company of her who was now my wife to be, I hoped, for the future my sole wife and of him who had been ever since our mortal enemy.
Esmo's alone remained impassive throughout my vindication, as throughout the apparent accusation and silent condemnation of his daughter. "Has any brother," he said, "counsel to speak respecting the question actually before us?" One and all were silent, till Esmo again put the formal question: "Has he who was our brother betrayed the brotherhood?"
The form, the dress, the long white hair and beard, the grave, dignified countenance, above all the deep, scrutinising, piercing eyes of the Founder as I had seen them on a single occasion in Esmo's house were now as clearly, as forcibly, presented to my sight as any figure in the flesh I ever beheld.
If the figure beside me were not at once recognised, I could not mistake the touch of the hand that stole into my own. The lights in the gallery were extinguished, and then I perceived a lamp held at the end of a wand of crystal, which gleamed above Esmo's head, and sufficed to guide us, giving light enough to direct our footsteps and little more.
From words of Esmo's, and from other sources, I gathered that the usual course under such circumstances would have been to keep the culprit under no other restraint than that confinement to the house which is too common to be remarkable, trusting to the terror which punishment inflicted and menaced by domestic authority would inspire.
The instrument wrote, so to speak, different hands under my voice and under Esmo's; and those who knew him could identify his phonogram, as my friends my manuscript.
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