8
THE SUNDAY FICTION MAGAZINE, JANUARY 21, 1017
Knelt, and-then returned to the sacred
flame. , She held it op with her round,
white arms, her little, shapely head
thrown back, that she miht gaze into
the idol's emerald eyes.
Then she inverted it, and the green,
transparent oil flowed into the bowl.
When she turned I saw her with the
light full upon her features.
Hers was the beauty that has wrecked
empires and sent philosophers insane.
Bhe stared past me Into the play of the
shimmering stars with wide, blue eyes,
Jet-fringed beneath joined black brows.
Vividly scarlet against the pallor of her
flawless features, her red lips arched
With a fierce hauteur that brought the
corners down toward the rounded chin.
Binding back the heavy strands of red
gold hair was a broad gold band, set in
Stars and crescents with blue diamonds.
Depending from a heavy gold chain upon
her white, magnificently arched chest
was a mighty emerald, and foiled be
neath tliexperfect white satin hemispheres
of her breasts was a lurid corselet of
rubies. They clicked and shimmered in
makelike coils at her slender waist and
undulated and scintillated with the
smooth play of the flat hip muscles. The
ruby robe terminated just above the
round, white knees. Against the angry
fluid fire of the stones the bare feet
seemed whiter, whiter than milk or ivory,
and almost as white as the snow of the
great Lucn Kun peaks.
THE wonder of her beauty caused the
play of the stars in the blue of the
heavens to dim before my eyes. The gold ,
and green of the temple swam before my
eyes, leaving her framed against a dull
background, vivid and beautiful and cold
as the diamonds in her hair. She depos
ited the golden vase beside the great sil
ver oil vat and walked over in front of
the golden calf. Over her white shoul
ders and down upon the jeweled armor
of her hips her golden hair rippled like a
living flame.
I had forgotten Lee Fu. But now like
a great spectral shadow I saw him. He
had emerged into the light and was
creeping up behind the Red Virgin. His
blunt head was thrust far forward, and
he walked on his toes. His hands were
in the loose silk of opposite sleeves.
Three paces behind her he stopped. His
long, skinny talons crept forth from his
sleeves. In his right hand flashed the
jade dagger that had killed McLarren.
His evil gaze seemed to focus upon the
girl's rippling corselet.
"Good God!" I screamed. "Not ' that,
Lee Fu, not that!"
I bounded across the great stone flags
and clutched his wrists. Over his shoul
der I saw the girl whirl about, her jet
fringed violet eyes wide with terror. The
husky Mongol picked me up bodily. His
face had never altered a line of its ex
pression, but the red-rimmed eyes glowed
like balls of blood-am ber , close to my
own. His tremendous, muscles crushed
the air from my lungs. Then high above
his head I caught in topsy-turvy pano
rama for a single second the vast stone
spirals of the Temple of 8iience and the
light-spattered, luminous velvet of the
sky. Lee Fu was hurjing me over the
edge of the terrace.
In that single second of terrified real
ization I heard Lee Fu cough. Then the
lean arms that held me poised against
the fluid pearl of the glittering milkV
way, trembled and relaxed. "We crum
pled down together upon the edge of the
rock. Shakily, with limb that quivered,
I struggled to my feet.
The girt shrank, back Into the temple
and stared" at me with frightened eyes,
In her hand she held a short, curved
scimita r. I glanced at the smear of blood
on its blade and then at Lee Fu. His
head was severed. It stared with unsee
ing eyes up at the baleful glare of the
golden calf. The lips had writhed back
from the yellow teeth and Lee Fu seemed
- In death to exult over the tact that I
must .needs play out our desperate hand
alone. -i
I was young, and the night sky was
blue-white with flaming planets, and the,
sacred flame deepened the charm of the
Red Virgin's long-lashed violet eyes. I
stared at her, drinking in the splendor
of her living presence. I walked toward
her and she shrank fearfully from me,
and the blood-smeared scimitar clattered
on the stone flags. She backed against
the great silver urn and cowered before
my brazen admiration.
I placed my hands on her warm white
shoulders and looked at the wide, long
eyes beneath the level, joined brows. She
quivered beneath my touch, and the huge
emerald on her arched bosom rose and
fell with the heaving of her breast.
"I came to steal your rubies," I said
aloud. "But now I know I was mistaken.
It isn't the jewels I want It's you!"
She didn't understand a word, but
such is the subtle telepathy of love that
even there, limned against the flaming
universe, with the night sky like a great
black velvet curtain sprinkled with star
dust, she stared into my eyes and read
my message. She lifted one warm,
round, youthful arm and pointed up to
the emerald eyes of the golden calf and
shook her head wistfully, causing her
golden hair tc quiver like sunlight on the
facets of a yellow diamond. Then she
made a movement as if to thrust me
away. But I would not be repulsed.
"It's only senseless metal, girl!" I
cried; "it's only a thing of heartless gold
and soulless emeralds. But you you're
alive you're flesh and blood and warm
and lovable. You're too beautiful to
waste out your days in a wilderness, in
service to an inanimate heathen idol!"
She put up her arms to fend me off,
but I grasped them at the wrists and
roughly forced them behind her back.
Then I kissed her on the red lips that
had lost their haughty curves and were
crumpled with the vast bewilderment of
a child. My arms went round her and I
crushed her to me until I could feel .the
beating of her heart beneath the clicking
chain armor of jewels. The perfume of
her breath and hair intoxicated me. She
ceased to struggle.
I thought she-ad fainted. But when
I held her from me a glorious red had
crept up from the arched chest and flood
ed her cheeks up to the very curved tips
of the downcast lashes of her wide eyes.
She trembled, and tears shone in her
lashes, brighter and more beautiful than
the emerald that flared on her breast.
She glanced up shyly and said some
thing in an alien tongue. I could only
guess at the meaning, but In her soft,
full throated contralto it sounded like a
caress. While the green orbs of the gold
en calf burned through the night and the
Whispering Prophet rested rigidly un
conscious of the sacrilege, I held her close
to me and whispered in a choky voice
the ecstasy that was mine.
With my arm around her yielding
waist I led her to the door and swept my
arm in a great vague arc toward the
south and west.
"It's there, darling," I said. "The
world of which you have never dreamed.
There I will worship you with greater
constancy than you have worshiped the
golden calf. Men. there dont cringe be
fore bloodless idols. Here you are a slave
to senseless rubies and ages-outworn
rituals. There you'll be a queen."
' - ,
SHE Wed up into ray face with eyes
alight la the shadows. I think she un
derstood. X like to think that. Other
wise there is no explanation for wbat'fol
lowed. Slowly her bare arms crept up
until they rested timidly on my shoul
ders. Then gently she turned nve around
until the sacred, flame fell upon my face. -For
a loner minute, while the sacred fire
hissed and purred over the mineral oil in
the jasper bowl, she stared up at me.
She must have been satisfied with, the
message she read in my face. The Jet
fringed eyes drooped, her glorious golden:
haired head Inclined forward against my
chest, and the white arms crept on
around my neck.
She was young, and her ruby-dad fig
ure trembled with the new significance of
life. Fifty fortunes in the blood-red gems
yielded to the pressure of my arms and
rustled with the rise and fall of her short
respirations. But 1 had forgotten that.
The idea had gone out, somehow, with
the very life blood of old Lee Fu! .
From the village below, thin and
shrill, came the crowing of a cock. The
sky had grown dim, and the luster of the
milky way had faded to a straggling
streak of dying stars. The girl stirred in
my arms. She pointed through the gloom
toward the village and said something. I
understood, it seemed. She was warning
me that we had tarried too long.
1 WRAPPED her in Lee Fu's silken
jacket, which he had dropped at
the door of the Temple of Silence, and
drew the black panther pelt over her
shoulders. Furtively we stole down the
interminable arcs of stone and across the
little court into the trail beneath the ce
dara She motioned for haste and turned
toward the left
It seemed to me that we had come
from the right, from farther up the val
ley, but she ignored my protest. Higher
and higher we mounted, until the cedar
had given way to sandalwood, and the
sandalwood .to little stunted gray-green
trees of a species new to mc.
Abruptly we entered the mouth of a
little cave far up on the cliff. The girl
cast herself down upon a bundle of dry
leaves and motioned for me to follow
suite. The sun rose, a blinding burst of
crimson light, against the kindling east
ern sky. Birds began to twitter in the
thickets at the mouth of the cave.
From her neck the girl took the heavy
golden chain and hung it from the mouta
of the cave, so that the twinkling facets
of the emerald seemed almost red with
the sunrise. After a few minutes' wait
she permitted a pebble to roll down the
hill, and at Intervals thrust others over
the ledge. I wondered what it signified.
Then there was a crackling sound
farther down the hill, and a man emerged
into view. He was short and stocky,
with ldng black beard and hair. As he
came closer I observed that he was
young, that he carried a crooked distaff,
and that his features were twisting, as if
from great nervous strain.
The girl called out softly, and he has
tened his pace. There, was. a, short col
loquy. The girl spoke slowly and calmly,
but the young man in the white tunic
spoke rapidly and harshly, as if con
sumed with anger. He advanced as they
talked, and then he saw me. His olive
features, with the tense striations of
fanaticism, were distorted with rage. I
think he would have rushed me had not
the girl intervened. She talked long and
pleadingly, striving to grasp his arm.
He fended her off as if she were a
leper, and then stared pa?t her at me.
Abruptly he turned and left. The girl
followed him with deepening shadows in
her eyes. Then she came over to me.
Her arm swept the great arc toward the
south and west. She smiled wistfully
and asked me a question. I suppose she
wanted to know if what I had promised
still held good.
If it is possible for a woman to took,
more beautiful in the first flush of day
than she has looked under the white play
of the stars, then the Red Virgin had
achieved that miracle. Her cheeks were
pink In the mornmg light, snd her skm.
that had seemed so white under the rays
of the sacred flame, waa a warm olive.
But In the sunlight ber goldea hair was
of rich titian tints, that shamed the
ruddy metal of the great idol. And she
looked even younger than by starlight.
With a catch in my throat I saw that
ahe waa only a child. I question If she
m was 11. But her figure had the voinptu-
ous perfection of the quick-ripenfng Ori
ent, and when -she crept into my arms,
and I felt the beating of her heart be
hind the clicking of the robe of rubies, I
knew that she was a woman!
At high noon the young man returned.
He came furtively and crept up another
route on his hands and knees. He car
ried a bundle on his back. In it were
brown, flat cakes and honey and coarse
woolen attire for the girl. He cast them
down at our feet with scorn in his flash
ing eyes. Then he turned to go.
The girl called to him. He spun
around and uttered something like a
commend. She knelt and he drew a
knife. I thought he meant to kill her
and cried out, with my rifle leveled at his
low, square brow. But the girl turned to
me and shook her head. He approached
her and very slowly and deliberately sev
ered the bands of the red robe that
crossed the girl's shoulders. The heavy
, garment slipped down from the smooth
bosom, and the girt cried out and
clutched it to her straining breast. The
man in the white tunio strode forth and
was gone. He didn't look back.
And crumpled forlornly in the corner
of the cave, with her hair and skin and
ruby robe aflame in the intruding sun
light, the Red Virgin crouched and
sobbed with the abandon of a little child.
1 understood the ceremony of the severed
straps, I thought. It waa the Valley of
Gwar's bar sinister. Here was the ages
old tragedy a vestal virgin in disgrace!
But I gathered her up in my arms, and
her sobs were stilled at last, and the light
of love glowed anew in the unfathomable
shadowy depths of her violet eyes.
When the stars flamed again in the
velvet void over the Luen Kun peaks we
started up a secret trail to the peak of
the Prophet'e Prayer. It led from a nar
row cleft in the hills into a little plateau
and thence to the gloomy, gusty cavern
of the cave of emeralds. Beyond it. faint
and spidery against the flaming aky,
swayed the hempen ladder. At this
point the girl mounted upon it without
fear. I guessed that all watches ware
withdrawn into the valley at night.
Her hair rippled and shimmered
against the silvery high lights of the
glistening panther pelt. It was a delight,
there below her, to swatch the sinuous
play of the muscles in her agile, slender
form. We mounted rapidly, so rapidly
that it was I who was out of breath and
exhausted when we gained the dizzy pin
nacle. We walked along the roof of the
world, southward, toward the cleft in the
trail whence we would 'descend to the
dead ashes of Lee Fu's last camp fire
and the ratty horses of Khotan.
BELOW us the Valley of Gwar
stretched away into the melting
shadows where the hills and sky merged
in a symphony of toneless Mack. Not a
light was visible anywhere. Tet I thought
It was near the hour for sacrificial fires.
Even as I conjectured the time they be
gan to flare forth beneath us. tiny, pin
points of lurid light.
The girl, walking ahead, shrouded in
the woolen robes, stopped to watch them.
When the procession formed for the
nightly ascent to the Temple of -Silence
she stood beside me over the yawning
chasm and watched the serpentine wind
ing of the white-robed torch bearers. I
thought I detected la the still air the
eerie quavering of the triumphal chant.
Then the Red Virgin made a tiny sound
in her throat, as if she had choked back
a sob.
I clasped her arm gently.
Xet us go on." I entreated. "We have
far to travel to the camp fire of Lee Fu
and the horses of Khotan."
But she didn't seem to heed. Then
gloriously loud and clear there lifted to
us . the liquid notes of the chanting wor
shipers of the gotdca calf. That which
had been an itlustoa became an actuality.
And through a mile of perpendicular
-starlit stillness, when the chant had
ceased, rose clearly, with awesome 'die.
tinctness, the sibUlant exhortations of
the Whispering Prophet.
We could see them now. straining our
eyes breathlessly over the edge of the
damp granite. They were a great are of
Msfit. and upon their bowed faces shone
the flickering flare of the sacred flame.
Some other virgin was pouring thexreen
mineral Vail into the great Jasper bowl
(Continued on Page 11)