orma, and the
curves of the full lips emphasized with vermilion. They looked down
on us with apathy, a dull weariness that held all the old evil of the
wicked humming city.

It had taken shape in those indolent bodies and heavy eyes that could
flash into life as a snake wakes into fierce darting energy when the
time comes to spring--direct inheritrixes from Lilith, in the fittest
setting in the world--the almost exhausted vice of an Oriental city as
old as time.

"And look-below here," said Vanna, pointing to one of the ghauts--long
rugged steps running down to the river.

"When I came yesterday, a great broken crowd was collected here, almost
shouldering each other into the water where a boat lay rocking. In it
lay the body of a man brutally murdered for the sake of a few rupees and
flung into the river. I could see the poor brown body stark in the boat
with a friend weeping beside it. On the lovely deodar bridge people
leaned over, watching with a grim open-mouthed curiosity, and business
went on gaily where the jewelers make the silver bangles for slender
wrists, and the rows of silver chains that make the necks like 'the
Tower of Damascus builded for an armory.' It was all very wild and
cruel. I went down to them-"

"Vanna--you went down? Horrible!"

"No, you see I heard them say the wife was almost a child and needs
help. So I went. Once long ago at Peshawar I saw the same thing happen,
and they came and took the child for the service of the gods, for she
was most lovely, and she clung to the feet of a man in terror, and the
priest stabbed her to the heart. She died in my arms.

"Good God!" I said, shuddering; "what a sight for you! Did they never
hang him?"

"He was not punished. I told you it was a very long time ago. Her
expression had a brooding quiet as she looked down into the running
river, almost it might be as if she saw the picture of that past misery
in the deep water. She said no more. But in her words and the terrible
crowding of its life, Srinagar seemed to me more of a nightmare than
anything I had seen, excepting only Benares; for the holy Benares is a
memory of horror, with a sense of blood hidden under its frantic crazy
devotion, and not far hidden either.

"Our own green shade, when we pulled back to it in the evening cool, was
a refuge of unspeakable quiet. She read aloud to me that evening by the
small light of our lamp beneath the trees, and, singularly, she read of
joy.

"I have