"_Baba-jee_ speaks truth," assented another bystander, "and _jogi-jee_ also. If She needs blood, She must have it, seeing She is Woman. As for _him?_ Let him be silent. He hath no God. No blood sacrifice, no remission of sins. Let _him_ speak who hath them." There was a faint sound as of the closing of a door, and beyond it, in the darkness of the arched passage, an old voice said, with a curious note of gladness in it, "Follow me, quick, Akbar; there is not a moment to be lost. The dawn has come!" It seemed to have come to Pidar Narâyan's face as he knelt hurriedly once more beside the body of the dead girl, to fold her dead hands decently as if in prayer, to cover the dead feet with the crimson draperies, the dead face with the flimsy, glittering veil--the veil which hid nothing of its beauty--which struck the keynote of the whole. "On whom be peace!" he whispered as he rose, stretching out his thin old hand in benediction; and as he said the words, the vision came to him of a whole world which had loved, and sinned, and gone on its mysterious quest for something beyond love. A world to which he had said farewell with a kiss. He passed on to the Altar, and with swift, steady hands opened the sanctuary, and took out the treasure it contained; a star-shaped, star-rayed pyx, set with jewels, relic of the days when singing-birds that sang of themselves, and such like things, with many another, had come to Eshwara from Italy. "Take the candles from the altar, Akbar," he said, "and walk in front--just in front, you know--as you used to walk." The old courtier mumbled "_Ge-reeb-pun-wâz_," with a caper of alacrity. In his confusion, his resentful remorse, it was a relief to return to pomp--to servility. So, with that Bodily Presence which, till then, had always brought the thought of the lost paradise of a woman's love with it, in his hands, Father Ninian and his strange acolyte, priest of another cult, passed swiftly out of the chapel, leaving the Altar dark, bereft of its treasure; leaving the dead woman, bereft of her treasure also, lying in a glitter of gold and crimson on the Altar steps. Passed on a mission of peace to the living; on the chance of gaining the ear, the eye, of that waiting crowd outside in the courtyard. As he went rapidly, yet with the faltering step every now and again of one wearied by long journeying, down the arched passage, Ninian Bruce scarcely thought of success or failure. There was a wistful triumph in his face--he looked as a slave might look who dies in making himself free. He did not think even of the strangeness of the little procession. The night had been so full of strange things; but the dawn had come, and he had a message to give those waiting souls outside--the souls who were being kept back from the "Cradle of the Gods" by that fear of the Eternal Womanhood. "Set the door wide, Akbar," he said, and then his voice merged into the "_Salutaris_."