drew away from them shuddering, as from a boiling caldron, and there were living even then in Angkor one or two wrecked and mangled wretches who, in a moment of folly, had set at defiance the universal belief.
For months Chun had been haunted and obsessed by the thought of that placid pool, in which there lurked, perhaps, a dreadful death. Again and again those calm waters, so tranquil in their massive confinement beneath the star-set sky, had drawn him to themselves with a compelling, magnetic attraction again and again, his young blood rebelling against the peril in its fierce love of life, he had recoiled, terror-stricken and ashamed. Death, fearful, unspeakably agonising—death in this life and in all future lives—glared at him from those still depths. Though his faith in his godhead was so firmly rooted in him as to have become an integral part of his being, yet was the risk appalling. He clung to the dream, longed hungrily for the reality, but still was held a prisoner by his fears.
And now to-night, at last, desire had won the mastery; and with bursting heart and throbbing veins, he had nerved himself for the worst that might befall, had drawn his muscles taut to resist the threatened agony, had closed his eyes, and with a great outcry to the Gods, had leaped.
The surprise, that yet was no surprise; the sudden release from the tense, agonising suspense; the wild triumph that flared up in him like
