at it
wanted, to the almost shapeless slug form which, in the peace times of
the present enervated century, contentedly eats lettuce in the damp
seclusion of an overturned flowerpot.

Yes! that call will pull those ramparts to pieces about your feet; and
at the last indescribable, insistent scream of triumph which sears your
brain and soul, it would be wise to be on the look out, and to keep a
strong hand upon the vows you may have vowed, and upon those of the
commandments you may not already have broken; because at that strange
seductive sound the solid chunks of love, honour, chastity and right
thinking; everything, in fact, that is in any way decent and above
board is likely to break into a thousand infinitesimal, unconsidered
atoms, and be blown broadcast by the wind of indiscretion.

Leonie lay still, unconscious of the sound and the subtle change
creeping over the man who bent down to her, and who, high caste,
over-educated, overstrung, aflame with love and afire with the
sensuality of his religion, slowly tightened his hand upon the gracious
curves of the slender throat.

Years ago Kali, his dire deity, had been outraged by denial in her
desire for sacrifice, and since then, in her wrath, the black goddess
had scourged the land with plague, pestilence, famine, and earthquake.

Truly sacrifice of goats and buffaloes had been made until the altars
and the courts of her temples ran blood; offerings had been made to her
priests of grain and jewels, yet had she continued to whip the land
until thousands died of hunger and disease.

Why should not his hand bring the long-desired and long-sought peace to
his well-loved land, and what more fitting place and time for sacrifice
than the steps of the Holy River, under the light of the full moon
which is Kali's lamp?

Ah! and why should he not have his earthly reward in love, one short,
full hour of the delight he had denied himself, and then, even upon the
_suttee_ stone, that little memorial of the burning alive of the young
widow upon the funeral pyre of the beloved husband, drive the diamond
hilted dagger through the soft breast in worship of his god, and
through his own heart that he might follow his beloved quickly as she
passed to Paradise.

Yes! sacrifice of the woman he loved that his god might be twice
pleased.

He was crazed with the delirium of his religion, mad with the call of
the senses lashed to frenzy by the restraint which had been unnaturally
fo