“Hell!”

For the silence had been suddenly broken by a girl’s sharp, hysterical laugh, and though the sound was but a travesty, yet it was surely Leonie’s laugh.

Twisting his arms in the space the two feet of raw hide allowed him, the slow, sure, desperate man with a mute appeal to his God, sought and caught the iron ring in his hands.

And in the jungle clearing where the fire smouldered dimly, and the coolies, flat on their faces from abject terror, refused to move, Madhu Krishnaghar sat, garbed as a servant, his brain in a whirl of religion and hate, and his heart filled with love of the white girl he had sent to certain death.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet, and tearing his raiment from him flung it wide, and stood nude save for the loin cloth about the slender middle, and the turban which outlined his tortured face, looking like some lost bronze statue in the deserted places of the jungle.  He raised his hands to heaven and prayed.

“O Mother, spare her!  O great god, have pity upon her,” and the suddenly risen wind took up his words and lifted them above the tree tops, wafting them perhaps—­and why not—­to the God of Infinite Love.

Yet even as he prayed Leonie crept up to the doorway of the temple, staring unblinkingly at the far end of the interior illuminated by the flickering wicks of the hundreds of little lights.  She inhaled deeply, and half closed her glaring eyes as the overpowering sickly perfume of flowers, and some other indescribably sickening odour went to her head like cheap wine.

“Yes?” she said questioningly, although no sound had broken the intense stillness, and stood quite still with her head a little on one side, then dropped to one knee and commenced to unlace her high boots, the slap of the laces pulled through the holes cutting the silence like a knife.

With her hands clasped to her breast, and walking on the tips of her bare toes, she moved through the shadows towards the light, alone and obedient to a will that had no pity.  Flowers were strewn thick in every direction, and over them she passed to her death, while the eyes of the priest never once left her face as he crouched in the opening which led to the secret places of the temple; he even smiled when she came to a standstill in front of the altar and swayed, slightly overcome by the heavy atmosphere even in her trance; and he nodded his head gently when she bent down and gathering handsful of the flowers, flung them up above her head and laughed the hysterical, crazy laugh which had reached the ears of the man she loved.

At her feet were thalees, brass plates laden with offerings of grain, of woven stuffs, of gold and silver; at her right hand a crimson silk sari lay upon a heap of fallen stones, and upon it was a garland of white flowers; and the slanting mother-o’-pearl eyes of the Goddess Kali looked down from out the black face at this girl who was to be sacrificed in atonement for the misery she had unwittingly brought upon the land of India and her people.