A trumpet-blast interrupted her—a long, deep, wailing sound. And out in the open behind the temple a pheasant rocketed up, with a scream of fright.
“There is the signal!” Lucilla whispered—not without a shudder. “Good-bye, dear love.”
She held out her hands to him. He drew her reverently into his arms, and bent a passionate, quivering face to hers. And so, they who were about to die, gave and took their first kiss. Lips lingered on lips, flesh clung to flesh. Neither spoke again—but telling each other more than words could say. They needed no words now, and they had none.
A crash of tom-toms and a low muttered chant came from behind the curtains through which the Raja had gone when he’d left them. A moment they clung the closer, then slowly and proudly drew the little apart that English dignity bade, and stood hand-in-hand facing the doorway as its curtains parted, and the death processional came in, moved upon them.
“Basil,” she whispered, and he caught what she said, though her lips scarcely moved, “kill me, kill me now!”
“Dear,” he whispered, “I have nothing—”
“Your hands!” she said. “Your hands are strong!”
Could he? he asked himself. He looked with stricken eyes at her pulsing throat. Could he? It must be done quickly, if done. They would overpower him at the first uplift of his hand. Why had he not thought of it before, while yet there’d been time, when still they’d been here alone? Fool! Wicked fool! But to have shortened so the short, short space of their love’s fulfilment! It would have been hard.
“Not yet—” he murmured. And he knew he would attempt it presently—at the last, last breath of moment left them.
Priests came first, chanting as they came, fantastically dressed, and each wearing some indescribable demon, high up-standing head-dress. Except the High Priest all were masked—the masks impossible, monstrous devils and animals. After them the Raja of Rukh came, walking, with folded arms, alone. He also wore now a priestly head-dress, richer, even more grotesque than theirs, and a stole-like garment, and one shaped like a cope, each a glittering jewel-mass. The long, flat, scarf-like, wide strip of fur, brocade and jewels that fell from either side from over his shoulders down to his ankles looked something a stole, the azure arabesqued drapery below it looked something a cope—so oddly, in surface things, do East and West often show to touch.