Which more by faith, than any medicinal property it contains, is supposed to work miracles in stressful times of rheumatism, and cattle sickness.

Jan Cuxson, trying to grasp and knot together the tag ends of a dawning knowledge, stood behind his beloved, patiently awaiting her next desire, instead of picking her up in his arms as he should have done, and carrying her off to safety, a good wash and a better dinner at the other end of the court.

He was surprised when she spoke quickly and below her breath.

“Take me away,” she whispered hoarsely as he caught her outstretched hands and pulled her fiercely into his arms.  “Take me away, the place is evil—­evil I tell you—­and”—­she raised her hand and passed it across his face, laughing softly, “I think I am bewitched—­something is--is--pulling--is------”

She looked back over her shoulder, stared hard for a moment, and then, tearing herself free, ran like a hunted deer through the crumbling doorway into the blackness of the temple.

“Who fears, O Woman?” whispered the man, whose beauty touched the unseemly as he sank to the ground.  “Who fears?”

Half-way up the temple Leonie stopped, standing in a silver pool of moonshine which blazed like the blade of a knife through a hole in the roof; lighting up the ruined altar, the grass-grown stones, and the image of a female deity carved in bas-relief upon a huge block of granite.

Nude was the woman carved out of stone, and of so dark a blue as to be almost black; with tongue protruding and hair in waving masses, through which were thrust four arms; garlanded with skulls she danced wantonly upon the body of a man, with two hands raised in blessing, in the third a knife, in the fourth a bleeding head.

Kali!  Kali!  Kali!

If only Jan Cuxson had been able to do something, anything, what a mint of trouble he would have saved himself and others, but instead, he stood rooted to a spot just inside the door, incapable of moving hand or foot, held by a force he did not even guess at, and therefore could not fight, watching Leonie as she moved slowly forward, as though she were walking in her sleep towards the blood-stained altar.

“So will she always come,” murmured the old priest as he laid his hand caressingly upon his well-beloved pupil.  “So will she always come.  Love?  Pah! who fears the love of man in the Black One’s temple?  Who?”

And there was no answer from the shrouded future.

Leonie stood still, quite still, unconscious of the eyes about her, and everything save the terrible problem she was trying to solve.

Then suddenly she cried aloud, and the words, like wings, beat against the roof and walls.

“I know!” she cried, “I know!  I know!”

And whirling round towards the spell-bound man, she turned her hands, palm downwards, with a wonderful eastern gesture of renunciation, and crumpled into a heap before the altar, and the three watching figures stole noiselessly back into the secret places of the temple as Cuxson, freed, strode hastily up to his beloved.