"Where am I?" I asked. "And who are you? A Heathen Goddess?"
She laughed softly. "You are in the temple of Lal," she said, "and I am a priestess of Lal."
"Why am I here?" I asked.
"I do not know," she said, "but you were sent, I think, to see."
"What," I asked, "is that murmur of voices, as if many prayed together?"
"They are praying," she said. "Look and see!"
She drew aside a fold of the tapestry, and I looked into the cavern of a temple. Around a lofty, mystic figure other swaying lamps of silver burned, and other priestesses in shining, gauzy robes held offerings aloft. And all the vast floor of the temple was one heaving sea of the women of the East, who knelt, and held their hands on high, imploringly, and laid their foreheads on the flagstones. And as they knelt they prayed, and the soft ripple of their voices made all the arches of the temple murmur.
"What do they pray for," I asked, "so many of them together?"
"For fruitfulness," said the priestess of Lal softly. "For fruitful love. They know that if a woman has that, she has all that the world can give her. So they pray for it."
"That," said I, "is the fate of women. The bitter fate, for when their love must prove unfruitful—"