t for support. She
laughed hysterically: it was so funny; it was all so out of joint with
real things, with every-day life as she had known it. Weird laughter
returned to mock her astonished ears, a sinister echo. And then she
laughed at the echo, being in the grip of a species of madness. In the
purple caverns of the temple she suddenly became conscious of another
presence. A flash as of moonlight striking two chrysoberyls took the
madness out of her mind. This forsaken temple was the haunt of a
leopard or a tiger.

She was lost. That magnetism which ordinarily was hers was at its
nadir. She hesitated for a second, then climbed into the empty
sarcophagus, crouching low. Strangely enough, as she did so a calm
fell upon her; all the terrors of her position dropped away from her as
mists from the mountain peaks. She had, however, got into the
hiding-place none too soon.

She heard the familiar pad-pad, the whiff-whiff of a big cat.
Immediately into the moonlight came an African lion, as out of place
here as Kathlyn herself; his tail slashed, there was a long black
streak from his mane to his tail where the hair had risen. Kathlyn
crouched even lower. The lion trotted round the sarcophagus, sniffing.
Presently he lifted his head and roared. The echoes played battledore
and shuttlecock with the sound. The lion roared again, this time at
the insulting echoes. For a few minutes the noise was deafening. A
rumble as of distant thunder, and the storm died away.

By and by she peered out cautiously. She saw the lion crossing the
open space between the temple and the jungle. She saw him pause, bend
his head, then lope away in the direction taken by Rajah.

To Kathlyn it seemed that she had no longer anything to do with the
body of Kathlyn Hare. The soul of another had stepped into this
wearied flesh of hers and now directed its physical manifestations,
while her own spirit stood gratefully and passively aloof. Nothing
could happen now; the world had grown still and calm. The spirit drew
the sleeves of the robe snugly about her arms and laid Kathlyn's head
upon them and drew her down into a profound slumber.

Half a mile to the north of the ruined temple there lay, all
unsuspected by Kathlyn, a village--a village belonging solely to the
poor, mostly ryots or tillers of the soil. The poor in Asia know but
two periods of time--for rarely do they possess such a thing as a watch
or a clock--sunset and sunris