"On whom be peace!" he whispered as he rose, stretching out his thin old hand in benediction; and as he said the words, the vision came to him of a whole world which had loved, and sinned, and gone on its mysterious quest for something beyond love. A world to which he had said farewell with a kiss.
He passed on to the Altar, and with swift, steady hands opened the sanctuary, and took out the treasure it contained; a star-shaped, star-rayed pyx, set with jewels, relic of the days when singing-birds that sang of themselves, and such like things, with many another, had come to Eshwara from Italy.
"Take the candles from the altar, Akbar," he said, "and walk in front--just in front, you know--as you used to walk."
The old courtier mumbled "Ge-reeb-pun-wâz," with a caper of alacrity. In his confusion, his resentful remorse, it was a relief to return to pomp--to servility.
So, with that Bodily Presence which, till then, had always brought the thought of the lost paradise of a woman's love with it, in his hands, Father Ninian and his strange acolyte, priest of another cult, passed swiftly out of the chapel, leaving the Altar dark, bereft of its treasure; leaving the dead woman, bereft of her treasure also, lying in a glitter of gold and crimson on the Altar steps. Passed on a mission of peace to the living; on the chance of gaining the ear, the eye, of that waiting crowd outside in the courtyard.
As he went rapidly, yet with the faltering step every now and again of one wearied by long journeying, down the arched passage, Ninian Bruce scarcely thought of success or failure. There was a wistful triumph in his face--he looked as a slave might look who dies in making himself free. He did not think even of the strangeness of the little procession. The night had been so full of strange things; but the dawn had come, and he had a message to give those waiting souls outside--the souls who were being kept back from the "Cradle of the Gods" by that fear of the Eternal Womanhood.
"Set the door wide, Akbar," he said, and then his voice merged into the "Salutaris."
So, as the crowd turned at the sound of the opening door, the sound of the chanting voice, it saw, raised above it, dim against an arched shadow, seen by the grey light of daybreak and the flicker of two tall tapers, a strange star-rayed cup shining in the clasped hands of a man. An old man in a strange dress, chanting a strange song. And the sight, by its very strangeness, its claim to something beyond familiarity, was not strange to that restless crowd, waiting for a sign, waiting for something not in themselves.
"What is it? What means it?"
The whisper came like the soft hush of a wave; and above it the chant rose clearly.