eft up the long flight of stairs, passed through the rooms
filled with relics of Rome found in Britain, and stopped.

Just for a second she put the palm of her ungloved hand against her
forehead, sighed quickly, with her head bent forward, then passed
through the doorway, turned to the left, stopped and said "Yes?"

And the man, in faultless western clothes save for the white turban
which with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face, with a
look of satisfaction in the dark eyes, salaamed before the beautiful
woman who had looked at him questioningly.

"Allow me!" he said simply, bending to pick up the glove she had
dropped, the smile of satisfaction deepening as he looked at her again.

She had turned from him, and stock-still was staring into the glass
case which lined the wall.

Closer she pressed, until her nose, flattened against the glass looked
like a white cherry.

"Kali," she read, "Kali, the Goddess of Death. I thought--I----"

Lower she leant to look at the square stone image numbered thirty-seven.

High breasted, squatting on her crossed legs, garlanded with skulls,
with five hands, holding a sword, a thunderbolt, a skull, a snake, a
cup, and the other two raised in blessing, the goddess leers at you
like a very old woman from behind the glass.

Leonie turned swiftly to find herself alone; and the hunted look in her
gold-flecked eyes deepened to horror as she gathered her skirts about
her, and fled blindly through the rooms, and down the stairs, and out
of the building.

Heading straight down Museum Street for Oxford Street, she ran across
the road at the risk of her neck and the wrath of a taxi-driver; gave
one terrified backward glance at a law-abiding student from India, who
was going to his cheery lodgings in Bloomsbury; and fled into the
tea-rooms which lure you outside with the pretty apple-painted ware in
the window, and where inside, one beautiful little blonde head shines
like a field of ripening wheat.

Safe, she crouched down behind the window curtain with her eyes fixed
unseeingly on the distorted figures of the Java frieze.

BOOK II

THE EAST

CHAPTER XXVI

"But when the desire cometh,
it is a tree of life."--_The Bible_.

The first-class passengers, leastways the passengers travelling first
class, lay stretched out side by side, one sex to starboard, t'other to
port, divided, however, more by the fear of the eyes of the other sex,
than by any ha