“And then, I know not how, I found myself looking as from the doorway into the interior. Between two guttering torches the great image lifted itself up into a smoky obscurity, the glinting jewel still upon its breast—the jewel that was suspended by a flexible snake of reddish gold. With an impressive serenity the great calm face looked straight before it, its hands stretched out from the elbow above the legs crossed for its squatting, ‘earth-touching’ position. Below it, on the steps of the altar, a priest squatted also, his shaven head nodding forward in the sleep of a vigil excessively prolonged. By the portal stood the shrinking figure of the girl, staring in terror at the jewel winking in the uncertain light of the expiring torches.
“For a long, long moment she stood there, unable to move, her face looking as carven in its fixed immobility as the image itself. With a sympathetic thrill, I realized the awful superstitious dread which had her in its grip. Then her human love triumphed. I saw her glide stealthily toward the giant figure, so stealthily that the nodding head of the somnolent priest altered not in the regularity of its drowsy rise and fall, so stealthily that she seemed but a part of the shifting shadows cast by the candelabra of the torches. Nimbly and cautiously she clambered from the altar-steps to the knee of the mighty image, drew herself up to the arm outstretched in benediction. She balanced herself precariously, rose suddenly upright upon it, and snatched at the jewel.
“The clasp of the flexible gold snake broke with the violence of her pull. I saw it slide like a little stream of ruddy fire into her hands, saw the last flash of the jewel as she stuffed it into her bosom. And then, with a start, the priest looked up.
“Ere he could do more than spring to his feet, she had leaped down with the sure-footed agility of a mountain girl. In a quick movement she evaded his clutch, was gone.
“Once more I found myself looking at the garden where the white-clad figure lurked in the shadows. A moment of waiting, then down the moonlit open space came the flitting figure of the girl. Swiftly she approached, panic in her wild flight, in the beautiful features now close enough for distinct view. She was sobbing as she ran. The man stepped out to her. She stopped, stood for a second regarding him with a look of inexpressible reproach, and then, averting her head, thrust into his eager grasp the sacred jewel. He slipped it into his pocket and caught her in his arms. She gazed at him in yearning doubt, her head drawn back, her soul seeming to question him through her eyes, and then suddenly she flung herself toward him, her bare arms round his neck, her mouth on his, kissing him in a passionate paroxysm of caresses. Desperately she yielded herself to him, frenziedly claiming the reward for her crime—his love. I saw the tears rolling down her cheeks as she kissed him eagerly again and again, all else forgotten but absorption in his presence. In a thrill of apprehension, I remembered the priest. Surely the alarm was given—a horde of fanatics searching for her while she lingered so recklessly! Despite the utter silence in which all this passed, I almost fancied I could hear the sonorous booming of a gong.
“My apprehension quickened to a stab of acute alarm. There, slinking toward them in the shadows, as stealthily as a cat, came a crouching figure, nearer and nearer from behind. The steel blade he clutched flashed in the moonlight. His face looked up, illumined in the soft radiance which suffused the garden. I recognized it—the priest who had slumbered at his post!—and then, with a curious little internal shock, but vaguely, as if these later incidents belonged to another existence, the full recognition dawned upon me—the wretched native who had loitered about the deserted pagoda of Cho-lon, the conjurer of the café, the conjurer who—ages since—had filled the saloon of the Mary Gleeson with smoke and incense from the red fire of a bronze bowl! His ugly face contorted with vindictive cunning, he crept now upon the oblivious lovers locked in their passionate embrace. I saw him gather himself for the spring, the long, murderous knife openly in his hand. In a spasm of horror all of me tried frantically to shriek a warning, but I could not utter a sound. I seemed to be only a watching brain, divorced from all the other organs of the body. He leaped.
“There was a glimmer of cold light as the knife descended. I waited, my heart stopping, in doubt as to the victim. The uncertainty lasted but an instant. The girl, struck in the back, turned her face up to the sky and crumpled to her knees like a marionette whose string is cut. For one long moment the grinning evil face of the priest, tugging to release his knife, and the horrified eyes of the white man looked into each other in a silence which was appalling in its complete soundlessness. Then the white man struck savagely downward upon the shaven head—and sprang away into the darkness.
“Again I heard a gasp, a choked-back cry, from the obscurity at the side of me. But now it seemed to be startlingly nearer and, as my bewildered faculties tried to apprehend it, to identify the source which I knew vaguely must be familiar to me and yet could not bring to consciousness, my attention wandered for a moment. When I looked again the vision had disappeared. There was no longer garden or temple. There was only redly illumined smoke rolling upward from a dull red glow and an atmosphere of sweet sickly fumes that held my body in a drugged paralysis.
“Still I gazed, fascinated. Those thick, wreathing masses of smoke were shaping themselves—shaping themselves into something—something columnar. I watched like one in a dream, and as I watched a part of me attained to consciousness of Captain Strong sitting in frozen immobility by the side of me. The wreathing smoke coalesced, formed itself into something whose outlines were not yet clear. A brighter, yellower light emanated from below it, lit it up. A body—a vague female body—collected itself, and then a girl’s head, strangely beautiful for all its almond eyes and scanty brows, smiled upon us, suddenly vivid and real. I recognized it with a shock—the girl of the garden! She and her body were now one complete living organism that moved sinuously from the hips. I held my breath in awe. Whereas the visions I had been watching were like pictures at a distance, this was an actual living woman a few feet from us. The smoke disappeared. I was staring at a beautiful native woman, as real as you or I, mysteriously illumined in yellow light against a background of obscurity, who stood where the fumes had writhed upward from the bowl.
“Conscious as I now was of Captain Strong’s close neighbourhood, I craved to turn to him for astonished comment. But still my body was deprived of function; I could not move a muscle. He made neither move nor sound. Then I almost forgot him in the fascinated interest which this apparition compelled.