Straight up the steps ran Leonie, and into the interior of the temple, just as a priest, a lad, with his face twitching spasmodically, and calling upon his god, fell dead at her feet, smitten by the force of his religion.

Leonie, throwing up her arms, laughed as she put her cut and bleeding foot upon the boy’s neck—­laughed until the place pealed and echoed with the unseemly clamour, causing the crowds outside, held only in check by the mental force of the handful of priests, to strain against the invisible hypnotic barrier, and cry to high heaven for a sacrifice.

Then Leonie turned about and ran out on to the terrace, standing a ghastly, beautiful figure before the multitude; and only a pair of monkey eyes, in a pock-marked face, hidden by the deep shadows of a corner inside the temple, saw the high priest with roomal in hand, creep stealthily up behind the girl.

No one in the tumult heard the growling of the elements; no one noticed the clouds bent on enveloping the moon; no one but the pock-marked woman understood what was towards for the appeasing of the outraged god.

“Blood!” screamed the tight packed ranks; “a sacrifice of blood!  Kali is hungry!  Kali is thirsty!  Give unto the Black Mother that which she demands!”

Leonie flung up both arms and laughed, even as the high priest drew back one step, scowling at the averted sacrifice.

“A sacrifice!” went up the cry from thousands of throats; “a sacrifice! a sacrifice!”

Again Leonie flung out both arms, and, just as the roomal was slipping over the small head, with the scream of a tigress whose cub is in danger, the ayah leapt straight at her beloved child, wrenching the knotted handkerchief from the priest’s hand.

A horrible cry of disappointed blood lust shook the very earth; drums beat, horns screamed, daggers flashed in the dense mass, and fingers met round many a throat.

They were mad indeed the people, but none so mad as Leonie as she stood with feet apart glaring down at the ayah’s sleek head, which she held by the hair, in one hand.

So mad was she that the priests drew back as from one divine; all but the high-caste youth who stood unnoticed amongst them and who advanced one step as Leonie raised her face to the moon.

“She of the full moon,” she chanted, “was the first worshipped one with depths of days, of nights.  They who, O worshipful one, gratify thee with offerings, those well doers are entered into thy firmament!”

To which the waiting multitude thundered a response.

“A sacrifice!  A sacrifice!  A sacrifice!”

Over and over again went up the cry as men and women and children fell foaming to the ground, “and conches and kettledrums, tabors and drums, and cow-horns blared.”

Then came a silence, deep, sinister, and foreboding; only for one second before it was broken by a gasp, the catching of the breath in ecstasy of thousands of mankind.