e priest, it seemed, had formed a new idea. He had been looking
through puckered eyes at Ruth, keen, cool calculation in his glance, and
in spite of the discomfort of his strained position he contrived to nod.

"Kharvani!" he muttered, half aloud.

"Aye! Call on Kharvani!" sneered the Risaldar. "Perhaps the Bride of
Sivi will appear! Call louder!"

He stirred again among the charcoal with his tongs, and Ruth and the
High Priest both shuddered.

"Look!" said the High Priest in Hindustanee, nodding in Ruth's
direction. It was the first word that he had addressed to them. It
took them by surprise, and the Risaldar and his half-brother turned and
looked. Their breath left them.

Framed in the yellow lamplight, her thin, hot-weather garments draped
about her like a morning mist, Ruth stood and stared straight back at
them through frightened eyes. Her blue-black hair, which had become
loosened in her excitement, hung in a long plait over one shoulder and
gleamed in the lamp's reflection. Her skin took on a faintly golden
color from the feeble light, and her face seemed stamped with fear,
anxiety, pity and suffering, all at once, that strangely enhanced her
beauty, silhouetted as she was against the blackness of the wall behind,
she seemed to be standing in an aura, shimmering with radiated light.

"Kharvani!" said the High Priest to himself again, and the two Rajputs
stood still like men dumfounded, and stared and stared and stared.
They knew Kharvani's temple. Who was there in Hanadra, Christian or
Mohammedan or Hindu, who did not? The show-building of the city, the
ancient, gloomy, wonderful erection where bats lived in the dome and
flitted round Kharvani's image, the place where every one must go who
needed favors of the priests, the central hub of treason and intrigue,
where every plot was hatched and every rumor had its origin--the
ultimate, mazy, greedy, undisgorging goal of every bribe and every
blackmail-wrung rupee!

They knew, too, as every one must know who has ever been inside the
place, the amazing, awe-inspiring picture of Kharvani painted on the
inner wall; of Kharvani as she was idealized in the days when priests
believed in her and artists thought the labor of a lifetime well
employed in painting but one picture of her--Kharvani the sorrowful,
grieving for the wickedness of earth; Kharvani, Bride of Siva, ready to
intercede with Siva, the Destroyer, for the helpless, foolish, purblind
sons of man.