But Itza was very human, very feminine. Once her love had been aroused, her religious fanaticism dwindled, and she was as anxious to live and become my bride as she had been anxious before to meet death, to become the bride of Kinich Ahau. I drew her closer to me as I thought of those other maidens who were doomed to be cast into that hideous well. I determined that they should not be killed. Even though the Sacrifice of the Virgins was a sacred universal custom of the Mayan religion, it should not occur while I was in Mictolan. No, not even if I were forced to hurl the priest into the depths myself to prevent it. But the day of sacrifice was distant. Only on the moon of the cycle of Tonalmatl were the virgins wed to Kinich Ahau, and that was still several months ahead. Much might happen before then, and telling the prince I wished to see the city, I asked him to accompany me, and with Itza clinging to my hand we left the palace. That day was a day of the most amazing discoveries, of incredible surprises beyond my wildest dreams. I was quite prepared to find that these Mayas had advanced far beyond the civilization at the time of the conquest, and the fact that they had discovered the arch, that they had developed many of their arts to such a high degree, confirmed this. But I had never imagined for a single moment that they had advanced to such astounding heights in some directions, nor that it was possible for a race to acquire a knowledge of certain forces beyond that of any other race, and yet remain so primitive, so archaic in other directions. That, to me at the time was--and for that matter is even now--the most incredible, the most astonishing feature of the place. Here was a race, or rather a community, still in many respects no nearer the highest civilization than their ancestors centuries before had been--a people without even the knowledge of the wheel, a race ignorant of steel, a community cut off from the entire world, following an immeasurably ancient religion, yet controlling forces of which we, the most highly advanced of known races, knew nothing. And yet in a way, it might have been expected. I knew that the ancient Mayas had, ages before the dawn of the Christian era, developed the most perfect numerical system in the world; that they had invented a calendar more accurate than anything up to the time of the revised Gregorian calendar; that they had an intimate knowledge of astronomy; that their glyphed or written language was without a parallel in the world, and yet they had never learned how to make an arch.