"Power!" he echoed, as the devotee echoes the name of his god. "Who does not? But do you think the woman that tempted the saint had none? If ever you reach that kingdom such power will become yours."
A proud glad exultation swept over her face for a moment. It quickly faded. She did not believe in a future. How many times had she not, since the hand of Claudis Flamma first struck her, prayed with all the passion of a child's dumb agony that the dominion of her Father's power might come to her? And the great Evil had never hearkened. He, whom all men around her feared, had made her no sign that he heard, but left her to blows, to solitude, to continual hunger, to perpetual toil.
"I have prayed to the devil again and again and he will not hear," she muttered. "Marcellin says that he has ears for all. But for me he has none."
"He has too much to do to hear all. All the nations of the earth beseech him. Yonder man on the cross they adjure with their mouths indeed; but it is your god only whom in their hearts they worship. See how the Christ hangs his head: he is so weary of lip service."
"But since they give the Christ so many temples, why do they raise none to the devil?"
"Chut! No man builds altars to his secret god. Look you: I will tell you another story: once, in an Eastern land, there was a temple dedicated to all the various deities of all the peoples that worshiped under the sun. There were many statues and rare ones; statues of silver and gold, of ivory, and agate, and chalcedony, and there were altars raised before all, on which every nation offered up sacrifice and burned incense before its divinity.
"Now, no nation would look at the god of another; and each people clustered about the feet of its own fetich, and glorified it, crying out, 'There is no god but this god.'
"The noise was fearful, and the feuds were many, and the poor king, whose thought it had been to erect such a temple, was confounded, and very sorrowful, and murmured, saying, 'I dreamed to beget universal peace and tolerance and harmony; and lo! there come of my thought nothing but discord and war.'
"Then to him there came a stranger, veiled, and claiming no country, and he said, 'You were mad to dream religion could ever be peace, yet, be not disquieted; give me but a little place and I will erect an altar whereat all men shall worship, leaving their own gods.'
"The king gave him permission; and he raised up a simple stone, and on it he wrote, 'To the Secret Sin!' and, being a sorcerer, he wrote with a curious power, that showed the inscription to the sight of each man, but blinded him whilst he gazed on it to all sight of his fellows.