Ignoring his sarcasm, the Major proceeded: “Some time ago you accused me of ingenuity in the means I had adopted to recover my bachelorhood. It's not my bachelorhood, but my own and my country's honor that, with your help, I'm endeavoring to recover. That sounds extravagant? But consider—what motive could be sufficiently extravagant to compel a man to bend all his energies toward bringing the woman whom he loves to the scaffold? Because I say it calmly, you doubt that I love her. What man could help loving her? She's the last of a long line of false, fair women who've stirred up madness and left behind a trail of ruin.”
Rising wearily, Hindwood turned his back and commenced fingering the documents on his desk. “There'll be nothing gained by carrying this discussion further.”
With a question the Major recaptured his attention. “Did it ever strike you that she's partly Asiatic?”
Hindwood swung round, surprised into truth. “What makes you ask it?”
VII
Even to myself,” the Major sighed, “the story which I am about to tell sounds incredible. My reason for confiding it to a stranger is that, when you have heard it, you may dispense with chivalry and become stern enough to do your duty. To protect a woman, whatever her age or looks, is an instinct as primitive as religion. When she happens to be beautiful and the object of your affection, not to protect her is a kind of blasphemy. You and I, though you deny it, are both in love with Santa. I am her husband, while you are no more than her chance-met admirer. Yet you, in her hour of danger, are prepared to shield her with your honor, whereas I am among the most relentless of her pursuers.
“The best part of my life has been spent in India. I went there with my regiment when I was little more than a boy. The fascination of an ancient civilization took possession of my imagination. I became a student of it and soon acquired a knowledge of native habits which was more fitting to a secret agent than to a soldier. I learned to speak many dialects and could pass myself off as an Asiatic with the minimum amount of disguise. Instead of frequenting clubs and idling away my leisure in the usual round of social futilities which make up the average Anglo-Indian's life, I formed the practice of slipping out into the night and losing my identity in the teeming, Oriental shadow-world by which I was surrounded.
“On one of my wanderings—when or where it is not necessary to particularize—I strolled into a temple and saw a young girl dancing. As perhaps you know, girls are dedicated to the worship of certain gods and goddesses at a very early age. They are for the most part deities who symbolize fecundity; the ritual with which they are celebrated is gross. The temple girls are chosen for their beauty and are trained by the priesthood to perform sensual dances, which are as old as time. They are not nuns or priestesses; their social status, if they may be said to have any in a land where woman is at best a plaything, approximates to that of temple slaves. They are taken from their parents at an age when sahibs' children are in nurseries. From the moment they are dedicated, their minds and souls are left to stagnate; they are treated like performing animals—fed and drilled and degraded that they may employ their bodies with the utmost grace.
“This girl, the moment I saw her, impressed me as being the most fascinating human creature I had ever set eyes on. I had pressed in with the crowd from the evil-smelling, moonlit street. The temple was dim with the smoke of swaying censers. Its walls seemed vast with the flash of gold and jewels. At the far end, scarcely discernible, a huge god squatted, gloating and sinister. From somewhere in the shadows, swelling into frenzy, came the pounding of drums and the clash of barbaric music. Across the open pavement, between the god and the spectators, a chain of girls coiled and twisted like a snake.
“At the time I entered, the dance was nearly ended. It had evidently been going on for a long while. One by one the girls were slipping down exhausted. There they lay disordered, with their hair twined about them and their slim, bronze bodies twitching.