The Syeds' hands felt their sword hilts sullenly, but their spokesman had no choice of words.
"Let her go. We of Bârha harbour no harlots--no idolaters."
So through the audience, in obedience to her sign, the servants of her courtesanship carried her, seated, discreetly smiling, decorously salaaming. But once outside, the crowd which followed her to Satanstown caught up the song she had sung and bellowed it to the skies, filling the lanes and byways with the tale which, told so many ways, brings the mind back at last to the beginning of all things--to the "Sleeper sleeping self-em-meshed."
As the procession passed a narrow turn, two men dressed as natives, almost of native complexion, yet of such curious dissimilarity of features from the crowd around them that the eye picked them out instinctively as strangers, stood back on a high piled doorstep to escape the crush.
"Vadre retro Satanas" muttered the taller of the two, crossing himself and thus giving a glimpse of a violet ribbon on his breast hung with the Portuguese Order of Christ. Its white cross charged upon a red one glistened for an instant in the sun like silver.
They were Jesuit missionaries, and the smaller of the two, as he watched, crossed himself also and murmured under his breath, "God help us! She is like a Madonna!"
And, in truth, Siyah Yamin silent, possibly fatigued by the excitement, seated with her childish face upraised, her eyes seemingly full of wistful thought fixed on vacancy, as if somewhere out of sight lay something very precious, looked innocent enough to touch that other pivot of feminine life, Motherhood.
And I give them Death for Life,
And I bring them Sorrow and Strife,
And I suck their senses away
As they follow and follow for aye
The fall of my dancing feet.
Prakrît! Prakrît!
The chorus bellowed out to the skies, as the procession swept on, leaving Father Ricci and Father Rudolpho Acquaviva to continue their way to the little mission chapel which Akbar had built for them.