rced upon him throughout his life; his eyes had the look of the eyes
of those gods who spy down upon you from the shadowy corners of India's
temples, and his nostrils dilated as he touched the dagger in her hand.

Only for a moment! For even as he touched it the single beat of a drum
fell heavily upon the air, causing him to sit back on his heels with a
smile upon the full curved lips, and a light of sudden understanding in
his eyes.

There was more toward than a mere sacrifice!

The Holy City was, and had been for days, in a positive ferment of
religious excitement; the bazaars were thronged with pilgrims who, by
boat and train and on foot, had hurried to the city of a thousand
temples.

Something unusual was in the air although no one could clearly explain
what it was; something was to happen although no one could name the
hour or the day!

Rice, and flowers, and jewels cemented with blood had been thrust into
and pressed down until they completely filled the great crack which had
suddenly appeared before the altar of the oldest and most venerated
image of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction, in the Holy City; and the
foreigner had been warned not to place his profane foot within the
precincts of the city upon this night of the full moon.

The native laughed as he sprang to his feet, standing bare and
exceeding beautiful beside the indescribable graven images; and he
laughed as he searched in the folds of his turban, and having found the
pellets bent down and pressed them between Leonie's teeth, then jerked
her to her feet, steadying her with his eyes.

He flung her back against the kiosk wall, and encircling her with his
arms drove them fiercely down and against her as he met his splendid
teeth in the whiteness of her shoulder--in love; and taking her hand
sped with her to the inner places of the city, shouting as he ran in
the frenzy of his religion.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

"Neither let her take thee with her eyelids."--_The Bible_.
"And making a tinkling with their feet."--_The Bible_.

The bazaars were moving in one solid mass in the direction of, but not
to, the Cow Temple.

For hours the endless streams had moved inch by inch through the narrow
streets lined with shops and gaily painted houses, towards the heart of
India's Holy City.

Young women and old, young men and old, children, fakirs and holy men
pressed patiently forward, impelled and called by some mystic summons
they could not expla