"Here!" Toffee yelled. "Take my hand! I'll pull you down!"

Marc reached out to Toffee, but too quickly; the sudden movement caused him to veer away from her. He drifted to one side, revolved helplessly, then moved away.

"Help!" he yelled. "For Pete's sake, help!"

Toffee stood staring at him, too terror stricken to move. She watched, transfixed, as he soared drunkenly across the broad foyer, apparently marking the tide of the air conditioning.

"Oh, Mona!" she murmured. "He's sailing like a kite in an autumn wind!"

Up till this time the foyer had remained blissfully deserted, but this was not a condition destined to endure. At the worst possible moment, just as Marc drifted wordlessly past the doorway, a company of diners entered from the dining room. Four in all, two men and two women, they walked into the room, stopped, observed a figure going past overhead, floating lazily in mid-air like an agonized leaf on the tide, and fell into a tense silence. All four of them stared hauntedly into space for a time. Then one of the ladies, of a lesser fortitude than the others, reached out and took her companion's arm in a death grip.

"I could have sworn I saw...!"

The man, a portly individual with a grey, senatorial mane, reached out and, without hesitation, clapped a hand over the lady's mouth.

"No, you didn't, dear," he said quietly, "we just won't speak of it."

Together, the four turned and silently filed back into the dining room.

"I'd like to enquire about the brandy sauce," the old gentleman said through clenched teeth. "I may sue this place before I'm through."

In the meantime, Toffee had taken out in hot pursuit of Marc. "Grab something!" she panted, running along beneath him. "Grab something and hold on!"

The words came dimly to Marc through the pounding panic in his mind, but he obeyed them automatically. He reached out and felt frantically for something to take hold of. He had risen by now to a height of about eight feet and was circling toward the fountain. It was destiny that guided him to the statue.

He caught hold of the stone lady and grappled to make his grasp firm. If at this point in the proceedings the mistress of the fountain did not reach 

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