thews and sinews, than by the magic force of mind.
Thus, through childhood on into early manhood, the secret of his divinity had been to Chun a wondrous spinner of dreams. How good life was—to taste, to smell, to touch—while these great visions made of it a fairy tale that yet was true!
Breathlessly he had awaited the time when, having come to man's estate, he should put the faith that was in him to its final, supreme test—the test that lay ever ready to his hand. But when at last he knew himself free to act, he was long restrained by fears and hesitations. The dream was in itself so beautiful that he feared to shatter it. Morever, the awful punishment of failure terrorised his imagination.
In the angle formed by the causeway and the western extremity of the great basic platform of the Wat, a tank held its clear waters within massive walls of stone, wonderfully carved. This was the bathing-place sacred to the use of those demigods who performed the offices of their religion within the temple. Only a Brahman might lave himself here, and for one of the low-caste folk to dip in it so much as a finger-tip was untold pollution and defilement. Also it was known to all men that, save for the twice-born, these waters were a flaming death—that they would peel and strip the flesh from off the bones of the impious one who dared to let his unclean hand so much as brush their surface. Folk
