uropean; he isn't negroid or Indian;
but there is something about him that makes one thing of all of these,
singly and collectively. His body is twisted and grotesque, and when one
looks at his face, one feels a desire to touch him, to swear eternal
fealty to him--until one looks into his pale eyes, eyes almost milky in
their paleness--and gets the merest hint of the thoughts which actuate
him. If he has a failing I did not find it. He does not drink,
gamble...."

"And women?" queried Kane, softly.

* * * * *

Kleig was madly in love with the sister of Kane, Charmion, and this
thing touched him nearest the heart, because Charmion was one of her
country's most famous beauties, about whom Moyen must already have
heard.

"Women?" repeated Kleig musingly, his black eyes troubled, haunted. "I
scarcely know. He has no love for women, only because he has no capacity
for any love save self-love. But when I think of him in this connection
I seem to see Moyen, grown to monster proportions, sitting on a mighty
throne, with nude women groveling at his feet, bathed in tears, their
long hair in mantles of sorrow, hiding their shamed faces! That sounds
wild, doesn't it? But it's the picture I get of Moyen when I think of
Moyen and of women. Many women will love him, and have, perhaps. But
while he has taken many, though I am only guessing here, he has given
_himself_ to none. Another thing: His followers--well, he sets no limits
to the lusts of his men, requiring only that every soldier be fit for
duty, with a body strong for hardship. You understand?"

Kane understood; and his face was very pale.

"Yes," he said, his voice almost a whisper, "I understand, and as you
speak of this man I seem to see a city in ruins, and hordes of men
marching, bloodstained men entering houses ... from which, immediately
afterward, come the screams of women ... terror-stricken women...."

He shuddered and could not go on for the very horror of the vision that
had come to him.

But Kleig stared at him as though he saw a ghost.

"Great God, Carl!" he gasped. "The same identical picture has been in my
mind, not once but a thousand times! I wonder...."

Was it an omen of the future for the West?

Deep in his soul Prester Kleig fancied he could hear the sardonic
laughter of the half-god, Moyen.

* * * * *

A tiny bell rang inside the dash, behind the instruments. Kane had set
dire