Through riven walls and roofs, moonlight streamed:  its spectral brightness intensifying every patch or streak of shadow.  And there, where Kings and Princes had held audience—­watched by their womenfolk through fretted screens—­was neither roof nor walls; only a group of marble pillars, as it were assembled in ghostly conference.  The stark silence and emptiness—­not of yesterday, but of centuries—­smote him with a personal pang.  From end to end of the rock it brooded; a haunting presence,—­tutelary goddess of Chitor.  There is an emptiness of the open desert, of an untrodden snowfield that lifts the soul and sets it face to face with God; but the emptiness of a city forsaken is that of a body with the spark of life extinct:—­’the silver cord loosed, the golden bowl broken, and the pitcher broken at the fountain ...’

Terry’s sharp bark, a squawk and a scuffle of wings, made him start violently and jarred him all through.  It seemed almost profane—­as if one were in a cathedral.  Calling the marauder to heel, he mounted and rode on toward the Tower of Victory.  For the moon was dipping westward; and he must see that vast view bathed in moonlight.  Then the dawn....

Once more deserting Suraj; he confronted Khumba’s Tower; scatheless as the builder’s hand left it four centuries ago.  Massive and arrogant, it loomed above him; scarcely a foot of stone uncarven, so far as he could see—­exploring the four-square base of it with the aid of the moon and his torch.  Figures, in high relief, everywhere—­animal, human and divine; a riot of impossible forms, impossibly intertwined; ghoulish in any aspect, and in moonlight hideously so:—­bewildering, repellent, frankly obscene.  But even while his cultured eye rejected it all, some infinitesimal fragment of himself knew there was symbolic meaning in that orgy of sculpture, could one but find the key.

Up and up, round and round the inner spiral staircase he climbed, in a creepsome darkness, invaded by moonbeams, hardly less creepsome, admitted through window-like openings set in every face of every storey.  With each inrush of light, each flash of his torch, in deepest darkness, those thronging figures, weirdly distorted, sprang at him afresh, sending ignominious trickles down his spine.  Walls, window slabs, door beams—­the vast building was encrusted with them from base to summit; a nightmare of prancing, writhing, gesticulating unrest; only one still face repeated at intervals—­the Great God holding the wheel of Law....

Never had Roy more keenly appreciated the company of Terry, who, in spite of a Celtic pedigree, was not enjoying this prolonged practical joke.

It was relief unspeakable to emerge at last, into full light and clean sweet morning air.  For the ninth storey, under the dome, was arcaded on all four sides and refreshingly innocent of decoration.  Not a posturing figure to be seen.  Nothing but restful slabs of polished stone.  There was meaning in this also—­could one catch the trend of the builder’s thought.