"Shall we get through?"
"I don't know—I don't know what's happened. It may be nothing——"
"You don't believe that yourself. It is something. Anyhow, we've got to try for it——"
The fear was in him, not in her. Even then, striding at her side, bracing himself for whatever lay before them, he wondered at her, thrilled at the joyous adventurousness in her. Her head was erect and she was smiling faintly. The howling of the frantic, demented mob which swept backwards and forwards across the plain did not seem to touch her. He felt how, with the coolness of a general, she was measuring the distances, their chances. He saw the tightening of her lips and that she had measured rightly.
"If it's us they're mad with, it will be a close finish," she said, with a low laugh.
He scarcely heard her. He was watching the men and women who overtook them and ran past. Their faces were unknown to him. They looked back at him—-with the wild-eyed curiosity of animals. As yet it was only curiosity. They were as ignorant as himself as to the passion which had broken through the crust of restraint and now raged in a mad whirlpool between the temple and the river. But the infection of frenzy was upon them. They muttered as they ran past—broken sentences in a dialect which he could not understand. They were pilgrims from distant provinces. He knew that they were in the majority and that he could have no hold over them. They would sweep the rest with them—even his own people.
The sprawling mass of life which had hugged the bank of the river turned and rolled back. In an instant, it had blocked the narrow passage on which he had based his hope of escape. He could see the golden effigy swaying madly above the crowd like a bright, sinister barque on a black, raging sea, now flung back, now forward, but still drawing steadily nearer. Through the wild uproar of voices the dull thud of a drum persisted. It was as though in that frenzied movement there was a purpose—a blind, demented will to an end.
He stopped short.
"We can't go on—it's too late—we must make a dash back and try for the bridge——"
"It is too late," she answered simply.