ohn listened breathlessly, catching a phrase
here and there, while the voice broke off, resumed, broke off
again--now strong and argumentative, now coloured with a slow, puzzled
impatience, Then a conviction commenced to dawn on the single
listener, and as realisation crept over him a spray of quick blood
rushed through his arteries. Braddock Washington was offering a bribe
to God!

That was it--there was no doubt. The diamond in the arms of his slaves
was some advance sample, a promise of more to follow.

That, John perceived after a time, was the thread running through his
sentences. Prometheus Enriched was calling to witness forgotten
sacrifices, forgotten rituals, prayers obsolete before the birth of
Christ. For a while his discourse took the farm of reminding God of
this gift or that which Divinity had deigned to accept from men--great
churches if he would rescue cities from the plague, gifts of myrrh and
gold, of human lives and beautiful women and captive armies, of
children and queens, of beasts of the forest and field, sheep and
goats, harvests and cities, whole conquered lands that had been
offered up in lust or blood for His appeasal, buying a meed's worth of
alleviation from the Divine wrath--and now he, Braddock Washington,
Emperor of Diamonds, king and priest of the age of gold, arbiter of
splendour and luxury, would offer up a treasure such as princes before
him had never dreamed of, offer it up not in suppliance, but in pride.

He would give to God, he continued, getting down to specifications,
the greatest diamond in the world. This diamond would be cut with many
more thousand facets than there were leaves on a tree, and yet the
whole diamond would be shaped with the perfection of a stone no bigger
than a fly. Many men would work upon it for many years. It would be
set in a great dome of beaten gold, wonderfully carved and equipped
with gates of opal and crusted sapphire. In the middle would be
hollowed out a chapel presided over by an altar of iridescent,
decomposing, ever-changing radium which would burn out the eyes of any
worshipper who lifted up his head from prayer--and on this altar there
would be slain for the amusement of the Divine Benefactor any victim
He should choose, even though it should be the greatest and most
powerful man alive.

In return he asked only a simple thing, a thing that for God would be
absurdly easy--only that matters should be as they were yesterday at
this hour and