“Why has the Afghan Musselman become a Hindu?” Bootea asked.

“I have no wish to anger these people who are on a holy pilgrimage by going into their temples as a Moslem.”

“You are going to the shrine of Omkar?” the Gulab asked aghast.

“Are you—­again?” Barlow parried.

“Yes, Sahib, soon.”

“I am going with you,” Barlow declared.

Bootea expostulated with almost fierce eagerness; with a fervour that increased the uneasiness in Barlow’s mind.  He had a premonition of evil; dread hung on his soul—­perhaps born of the dream of a tiger devouring the girl.

“The Sahib still has the Akbar Lamp—­the ruby?” the girl queried, presently.

“I have it safe,” he answered, tapping his breast.

“If the Sahib is not going to the shrine Bootea would desire that we could go out beyond the village to a mango tope where there are none to observe, for she would like to make the final salaams in his arms—­then nothing would matter.”

“Perhaps we had better go anyway,” Barlow said eagerly—­“though I am going over to the shrine with you; for now, being a Hindu, I can pass as your brother—­and there there would not be opportunity.”

The girl turned this over in her mind, then said:  “No, we will not go to the grove, for Bootea can say farewell to the Sahib in the cloister where Swami Sarasvati has a cell for vigils.”

Then asking Barlow to wait she went into the house and soon returned clothed in spotless white muslin.  He noticed that she had taken off all her ornaments, her jewellery.  The bangle of gold that was a twisting snake with a ruby head, she pressed upon Barlow, saying:  “When the Sahib is married to the Englay will he give her this from me as a safeguard against evil; and that it may cause her to worship the Sahib as a god, even as Bootea does.”

The simplicity, the genuine nobleness of this tribute of renunciation, hazed Barlow’s eyes with a mist—­almost tears; she was a strange combine of dramatic power and gentle sweetness.

“Now, come, Sahib,” she said, “if you insist.  It will not bring misery to Bootea but to you.”

Barlow strode along beside the girl steeped in ominous misgivings.  Perhaps his presence at the temple would avert whatever it was, that, like evil genii seemed to poison the air.

There was a moving throng of pilgrims that poured along in a joyous turbulent stream toward the bridge.  No shadow of the dread god, Omkar, gloomed their spirits; they chatted and laughed.  Of those who would make devotions the men were stripped to the waist, their limbs draped in spotless white.  And the women, on their way to have their sins forgiven, were taking final license—­the purdah of the veil was almost forgotten, for this was permitted in the presence of the god.  Even their beautifully formed bodies and limbs, the skin fresh anointed, gleaming like copper in the sunlight, showed entrancingly, voluptuously, with a new-born liberty.