“We!” she cried fiercely, “we will repay!”...
“God!” The voice seemed torn from his throat. “Oh God—my God!”
“Our gods,” she said steadily in that tone of iron, “are near. The sacrifice is ready. And you—servant of mercy, priest of a younger deity, and English—you bring the power that makes it effectual. The circuit is complete.”
It was perhaps the tears in her appealing eyes, perhaps it was her words, her voice, the wonder of her presence; all combined possibly in the spell that finally then struck down his will as with a single blow that paralysed his last resistance. The monstrous, half-legendary spirit of a primitive day recaptured him completely; he yielded to the spell of this tender, cruel woman, mother and avenging angel, whom horror and suffering had flung back upon the practices of uncivilized centuries. A common desire, a common lust and purpose, degraded both of them. They understood one another. Dropping back into a gulf of savage worship that set up idols in the place of God, they prayed to Odin and his awful crew....
It was again the touch of her hand that galvanized him. She raised him; he had been kneeling in slavish wonder and admiration at her feet. He leaped to do the bidding, however terrible, of this woman who was priestess, queen indeed, of a long-forgotten orgy.
“Vengeance at last!” he cried, in an exultant voice that no longer frightened him. “Now light the fire! Bring on the sacrifice!”
There was a rustling among the nearer branches, the forest stirred; the leaves of last year brushed against advancing feet. Yet before he could turn to see, before even the last words had wholly left his lips, the woman, whose hand still touched his fingers, suddenly tossed her cloak aside, and flinging her bare arms about his neck, drew him with impetuous passion towards her face and kissed him, as with delighted fury of exultant passion, full upon the mouth. Her body, in its clinging skins, pressed close against his own; her heat poured into him. She held him fiercely, savagely, and her burning kiss consumed his modern soul away with the fire of a primal day.
“The gods have given you to us,” she cried, releasing him. “Your soul is ours!”
She turned—they turned together—to look for one upon whose last hour the moon now shed her horrid silver.