Slowly, gradually he calmed her—­or probably she grew calm, in spite of his attentions, for he was too upset himself to exercise much soothing sway over anybody else.  At last, though, she fell into a fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb for fear of waking her.

Outside a full moon rose majestically, pure and silvery as peace herself, bathing the universe in blessings.  And each month, when the full moon rose above the carved dome of Siva’s temple, there was a ceremony gone through that commemorated cruelty, greed, poisoning, throat-slitting, hate, and all the hell-invented infamy that suckles always at the breast of stagnant treasure.

Since history has forgotten when, at each full moon, the priests of Siva had gone with circumstantial ceremony to view the hoarded wealth tied up by jealousy and guarded jealously in Howrah’s palace.  With them, as the custom that was stronger than a thousand laws dictated, went the Maharajah and his brother Jaimihr—­joint owners with the priests.

There had not been one Maharajah, since the first of that long line, who would not have given the lives of ten thousand men for leave to broach that treasure; nor, since the first heir apparent shared the secret with the priests and the holder of the throne, had there been one prince in line-son-brother-cousin—­who would not have drenched the throne with his relation’s blood with that same purpose.

Heir after heir could have agreed with Maharajah, but the priests had stood between.  That treasure was their fulcrum; the legacy, dictated by a dead, misguided hand, intended as a war reserve to stay the throne of Howrah in its need, and trebly locked to guard against profligacy, had placed the priests of Siva in the position of dictators of Howrah’s destiny.  A word from them, and a prince would slay his father—­only to discover that the promises of Siva’s priests were something less to build on than the hope of loot.  There would be another heir apparent to be let into the secret—­another man to scheme and hunger for the throne—­another party to the bloody three-angled intrigue which kept the Siva-servers fat and the princes lean.

Past masters of the art by which superstitious ignorance is swayed, the priests could swing the allegiance of the mob whichever way they chose —­even the soldiers, loyal enough to their masters under ordinary circumstances, would have rebelled at as much as a hint from holy Siva.  It was the priests who made it possible for Jaimihr to dare take his part in the ceremony; without them he would not have entered his brother’s palace-yard unless five thousand men at least were there to guard his back—­but, if there was danger where the priests were, there was safety too.

As the custom was, he rode to the temple of Siva first with a ten-man guard; there, when the priests had finished droning age-old anthems to the echoing roof, when his brother, the Maharajah, also with a ten-man guard, had joined him, and the two had submitted to the sanctifying rites prescribed, eleven priests would walk with them in solemn mummery to the palace-entrance—­censer-swinging, chanting, blasphemously acting duty to their gods and state.