of India's
holy writ, "by day and by night flowing on; I, of desirable activity,
call upon the heavenly waters!"

From the temple above the mad priest took up her words as he scourged
himself in the ecstasy of his worship, and shouted:

"Kali! Kali! Kali!"

Which eerie solitary cry brought the pigeons out of their nests in
thousands, to wheel and whirl madly in their fright before resettling
in the facade of the palaces, of the niches and nooks of the temples,
and the slender minarets of the Mosque of Aurangzeb.

Bending backwards Leonie laughed up at the priest above, whose body was
running blood, then descending the last three steps worn by the feet of
thousands of pilgrims, and tilted by time and the resistless waters,
flung out her arms and sank beneath the surface while the great plaits
of hair floated towards the man and crept about his waist like loving,
living arms.

Three times she sank, and three times she rose, singing gently to
herself, while great tremors shook the man from his turbaned head to
his slender feet.

Love or religion? Who knows!

Are they divided by much more than the breadth of a hair?

Leonie turned and walked up the steps, the wet heavy sheeting hobbling
her about the knees and ankles, clinging to her as the skin to the
peach, her dripping hair making little pools of holy water upon the
holy steps; until, standing upon the one where lay the little crumpled
heap of her silken _sari_, she unplaited it and shook it out in the
night breeze.

She picked up the _sari_ and the dagger, and ran a finger along the
razor edge, looking sideways at the man who moved not an inch when she
drove the point of the blade beneath the skin above his heart until the
blood ran; neither did she move when he dipped his finger in his own
blood and marked her between the brows with the sign of Kali.

The mad priest, frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting temple
roof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecent
noise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body to
pieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; and
Leonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white _sari_ picked
out in silver against her breast, held out her hand, and with the
sweetest, maddest laugh in all the world sped like a deer up the great
nights of steps.

And at the top when the man, moving swift and as surefooted as a buck,
closed in upon her, her heavy drapery folded