The Web of the Sun (Adventure Magazine, 1922)/Chapter 9

T IS a misfortune, indeed, almost a calamity for the province of biographical literature, that Charles Lassiter's passion for the Indian girl estranged him from Ezekiel Birdsong. This estrangement unfitted Lassiter for writing a sympathetic, or even a veridical account of that remarkable man.

Many other writers have attempted to reconstruct Birdsong's amazing career in Motobatl. The Motobatl Indians have been interviewed. Birdsong's letters to his wife have been studied and analyzed. Every genre of journal, from the stridor of the New York yellows to the basso profundo of the English quarterlies, has devoted fascicles to what may be termed the Birdsong myth.

But of Birdsong himself, little is known save those harsh and unsympathetic glimpses given of him in Lassiter's narrative. That the very story of his greatness should be confided to so adverse a pen is the final touch of irony in Ezekiel Birdsong's life.

Of the beginnings of Birdsong's bold undertaking, Lassiter knew, or expressed nothing more than that it disturbed his morning sleep in the paddlewood.

He was annoyed by the revivalistic hymns; and during the last days of the promoter's co-tenancy with the revivalist Birdsong's sunrise prayer-meetings forced Lassiter to abandon late morning hours in his hammock.

The promoter formed the unwilling habit of rising betimes. Then he would walk down to the arbol-de-vaca forest where he would meet Tilita. The two would then spend the remainder of the day in agreeable courtship, and in liming birds and starting them with messages to civilization begging rescue.

One morning curiosity sent Lassiter down to one of the meetings to see what Birdsong and his converts were doing. The sunrise services were held under a banyan not far from the paddlewood. Lassiter joined the little congregation and sat down on one of the rude seats that had been extemporized between the boles. Some dozen Indians were there, and Birdsong stood on a dais with a pulpit beside him.

The whole service was as near a reproduction of the ordinary sunrise meeting as Birdsong could contrive. The colporteur had chosen a “topic” and cognate texts. Nunes translated these into Quichau from Birdsong's shocking Spanish. The Indians understood Quichua because this tongue is only a slight variant of the old Incan. After all this twisting through three languages, the new converts would arise and repeat their memory verses.

Lassiter, who possessed exceptional linguistic facility, could follow the texts through all their metamorphoses, and he heard some extraordinary renderings of King James' version.

Birdsong himself, standing on his dais, sweated under this mental struggle. Only his black oily hair remained unruffled. The left half and top of his hair had an ebony finish; over his right eye and ear, it broke into a gleaming scroll of large polished curls, greatly aided by a cow-lick over the right temple. It was the tonsure of a rustic arbiter elegantorium, and Lassiter was always amazed to see such hair on such an indomitable fellow.

Prolonged Ecuadorian sunshine had burned the colporteur quite as dark as Nunes, but it was the reddish brown of an Anglo-Saxon, not the yellowish brown of a native. During the services, three transverse wrinkles in the thick skin of Bird song's forehead filled with sweat. This reflected the foliage of the banyan above and drew three bright green streaks above and parallel with his eye brows.

The colporteur exhorted his hearers to quit their sins and to give their hearts to God. He talked of God's desires, preferences and predilections with convincing intimacy. He had the power of a prestidigitator to visualize the impalpable.

His absolute conviction that there was a power above him, looking down on him, with whom he was in immediately personal touch, at last produced an illusion of reality even in Lassiter. The promoter received a very concrete impression that up in the banyan above them sat a very irascible old gentleman, who watched the worshipers closely, reading their thoughts, and who was on the qui vive for their every little fault, which he meant to punish terrifically.

At the conclusion of the address, Birdsong called upon his hearers to testify to the experiences through which they had passed in gaining salvation for their souls, or, as Birdsong expressed it, how did they know they had made their calling and election sure?

They arose one at a time. Some had seen visions, others had dreamed dreams. One fisherman avouched that a fish in his net had spoken to him. Birdsong greeted each new testimonial with fervent ejaculations and vigorous shakes of the hand.

In the midst of these felicitations, a middle-aged Indian arose and said that his wife would soon bear him a baby, his eighth child. He wanted to know what he should do in order that it should go to Heaven, instead of to the Sun.

Birdsong advised him to bring it to the banyan for baptism.

“Then what must I do with it, Brother Birdsong?”

“Train it to serve God and keep His commandments.”

The Indian, whose name was Chacala, seemed astonished.

“Train it here in Motobatl?”

“Certainly!”

“My eighth child?”

“God numbers the hairs of your head, brother Chacala,” said Birdsong, “but I never heard of him numbering a man's children, or caring what number it was. He loves 'em all.”

Chacala sprang up with a glowing face.

“Then I may keep my child! Your God lets me keep my child! Praise God! You will excuse me, Brother Birdsong, I must hurry to my wife! She may be delivered of a boy while I sit here talking! Praise God!”

And to Lassiter's amazement, Chacala turned and ran from the banyan, going northward toward the lake.

HACALA'S explosiveness ended the meeting. The colporteur and Nunes joined Lassiter and walked with him out of the banyan. Birdsong said Nunes had just joined his congregation and was doing a great work as an interrupter. He was anxious that Lassiter should be reconciled to Balthasar in order to aid the muleteer in his Christian life. The colporteur interlarded this with many quotations such as how good it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, blessed is the peacemaker, etc., etc.

So accordingly the two men shook hands and became friends.

The Colombian began an apology for his violence on Tilita.

“My dear Brother Carlos, as a Christian man, awakened to a new sense of duty, I crave your pardon for”

Lassiter assured him he had it.

“And the pardon of the hermosa senorita”

He had that, too; Lassiter granted it.

“Certainly the devil of temptation is wrapped up in a woman, Brother Carlos,” moralized Nunes.

Lassiter agreed briefly.

“You have felt it, Brother Carlos, you understand”

The promoter made no reply.

“So you can excuse me more readily if I went beside myself— Mios Dios! I swear to you, my brother, the mere memory of it—” He gave, a little shiver, checked himself, swallowed. “But that is all over now, put behind me by the help of the Blessed Virgin.”

“Redeemer,” prompted Birdsong.

“Si, si,” nodded Balthasar, “a man—you cold Norte Americanos.”

“Amen,” drawled Birdsong fervently. “God has taken away your filthy lusts, brother Nunes.”

“That's all over now; let's drop it,” suggested Lassiter.

“Si, it's all over now—now I spend my time on my knees praying—praying—” He fell to shivering violently. “Ugh, Brother Carlos, it's cold work, I tell you, on your knees praying to the Blessed Virgin when you know another man holds your querida wrapped in his arms, kissing—hugging—fondling—and she kissing back—Mios Dios—It's chilly, chilly work!”

Balthasar's teeth chattered even in the heat of the sun.

The men walked on in silence for a few paces, then Lassiter said, to fill the void:

“Birdsong, you are having nice weather for your meetings.”

The colporteur was beginning to thank the Lord for the weather when Nunes interrupted:

“My dear brother Carlos, may I ask as a friend, when you are going to marry Tilita, or—do you mean to marry her at all?”

A slight perspiration broke out on the promoter's face. He went on resolutely with his conversation with Birdsong.

“However, you must look out for a bit of bad weather, Birdsong. The 'inviernillo' comes soon, 'little winter' right in the middle of the dry season.”

“Because if—if you are not going to marry Tilita,” shivered Nunes, staring at the mold under their feet, “my dear brother Carlos, I think it is quite wrong— Mios Dios, I know it is quite wrong to be nuzzling her like that—quite wrong”

“Confound it!” cried Lassiter, wheeling on the muleteer. “Yes, I'm going to marry Tilita—I asked you to drop the subject!”

“I—I didn't intend”

“But you do!”

“Perdon!”

“You are pardoned, but it, quit talking!”

Another silence ensued with Birdsong trudging along, staring at the promoter.

“Brother Lassiter! Brother Lassiter, is it possible that you are going to form a sacred union with this idolatrous”

The promoter sweated that Nunes had set Birdsong off on one of his endless harangues.

“Yes,” he said briefly.

“After I read you old Nehemiah's blessed thirteenth”

“I have nothing to do with Nehemiah. Never heard of him till you dug up a lot of insults and told me he”

“Insults! Out of the blessed gospels! Why, Brother Lassiter, that is a book of sweetness and peace, of love and affection”

The promoter remained silent, abusing himself for ever going to Birdsong'S meeting. He might have known it would lead to some unpleasantness.

The colporteur walked on, studying the New Yorker with his expressionless eyes.

“Do you realize, Brother Lassiter, that you are an old man and she is a child? You are an older man than I am, Brother Lassiter.”

“Maybe I am in years,” agreed Lassiter with poor temper, “but what's age here in the tropics—a man's as old as he feels.”

“And while you are too old for her now,” pursued Birdsong relentlessly, “do you realize, Brother Lassiter, in a few years she'll be too old for you?”

This last reasoning revived Lassiter's specter of old Prymoxl, a hopeless ancient at twenty-six or thereabout. What would he do when this luscious girl fell into decay?

“Of course I've thought about it,” frowned the promoter.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Marry her, I told you.”

“And live with her, Brother Lassiter, when she is old and flabby and brown, like her mammy?”

The words set Lassiter to probing his own intentions, and he found unflattering connotations in their depths. He wanted to defend himself before Birdsong. An argument floated to the surface showing the inevitability of polygamy in tropical countries. He thought of the Latin-Americans and the code which they accept. The whole question was a matter of geography—of where a man lived on the surface of the earth— Now—he did love Tilita—but old Prymoxl—if he could only get Tilita up North away from this heat. Then he realized that Birdsong could appreciate none of these arguments. He knew nothing of geography, of ethnology—a hard-headed bigoted rustic

“Birdsong,” he said, “I must decline to discuss so delicate a topic with any man.”

The trio walked on in silence over the deep leaf mold toward the lake. Nunes shivered occasionally in the hot sunshine. Birdsong moved stolidly with his expression less face. Lassiter was sweating. He was ashamed and sad, filled with that queer, bitter flavor of unfaithfulness in the midst of passion, of the hopelessness of permanency, of the sneer on the face of Time.

Presently the colporteur drawled—

“Brother Lassiter, have you tried to lead her into the blessed fold?”

The question set off Nunes into discordant laughter.

“Si, si, Brother Birdsong, he's been wrestling”

He broke off shivering.

“No, I haven't,” snapped the promoter.

“Why haven't you, brother?”

“Because—well, simply because I didn't want to.”

“You don't want to!”

“No.”

Birdsong stared.

“Do you want me and Brother Nunes to go and labor with her?”

“No!” cried the promoter. “No, I don't! I want her just as she is. She has a pretty faith. It—it suits her!”

“Her faith suits her!” the colporteur broke into unwonted temper. “You say it suits her—it's graceful and pretty! That's while she's graceful and pretty!”

“Here, Birdsong, don't go too far!”

“But when she's wrinkled and old, it won't be so graceful and pretty,” rushed on the revivalist angrily, “then you'll take up with a new girl, Mr. Lassiter! You know you will! I know you will! You ain't got no set principles about neither women nor God! You don't care what happens s'long as it panders to the filthy lusts of your”

A flush ran over Lassiter.

“Birdsong, you say another word”

“I'll say this,” drawled Birdsong, grimly, “I'm going to do what I can for the pore child's salvation. I don't believe you believe she's got no soul!”

“Confound you, I don't know and I don't care!” cried Lassiter beside himself. “She'll never pay any attention to you! She despises you already!”

A look of horror came over Birdsong's face.

“Mr. Lassiter, I do believe you're Anti-Christ! My God, I do believe you are! That Beast that sets on the hill with the blood of saints dripping from its jaws! You are Dagon! You're the Brute with Seven Horns! You'll swoller this girl, God ha' mercy! I'll pray God to rescue her from you! Oh, merciful God!”

The colporteur's earnestness was terrific. His face grayish. He turned from Lassiter as if from contamination, and veered north west to circle around the lake to his missionary field. Nunes followed his teacher, shivering.

HE promoter continued to the arbol de vaca forest furiously angry. The colporteur had insulted him with fantastic insults, and yet, strangely enough, Lassiter found himself in a defensive mood. Birdsong's reference to the Beast, the Dragon and Dagon disturbed Lassiter. They were disturbing anathemas.

Lassiter had never attended a country revival in the southern United States. He was not aware what a treasury of maledictions the rustic evangelist heaps upon the slightest object of his disapproval.

Besides being unnerved at Birdsong's vituperation, Lassiter thought twice as to what effect the colporteur's prayers might have on the girl. Experience had taught him that the colporteur did not pray in vain. Certainly all the answers Birdsong had received were purely by chance, but it was chance grown into a sort of habit.

The thought of losing Tilita went through Lassiter's midriff with a sort of spasm of pain. He began to sweat. He was so agitated that he hurried on down to the cow-tree forest, peering through the boles long before he could possibly have seen her.

His anxiety mounted as each empty aisle stretched itself before his eyes. At last, with very real relief, he saw her standing near the tapped trees, drawing the milkinto the calabashes. She was leaning this way and that, peering through the forest for him, because he was overdue.

Lassiter waved and shouted at her. So she had not been caught up in a chariot of fire, or a whirlwind, or translated away. He hurried up and kissed her far more fervently than usual. He asked with a certain concern if she were feeling well. Under the subterfuge of caressing her hand, he secretly felt her pulse. It was going a trifle fast, but under his extra gust of caressing, that was natural.

With his anxiety appeased, the promoter made himself comfortable and sat watching the girl drive an obsidian chisel into the cow-trees, then insert a joint of cane and catch a tiny rill of vaca sap. The liquid would flow for ten or twelve minutes and then dribble out. Tilita might have had a dozen canes dripping at once, but she contented herself with one. She was as unhurried in her work as the movement of the sun in the sky.

Her deliberation always spread a certain impatience through the New Yorker, and yet, somehow, it was provocative, too. As he watched her, his own nervous force always concentrated itself in a desire to sweep her into vehemence. Usually after an hour or so of such observation, her dilatoriness, goaded him into one of those out bursts of fondling that occur with a certain regularity among lovers, and are based, no doubt, upon some nervous periodicity.

Lassiter was in the midst of one of these ebullitions; he had just lifted Tilita in his arms when he glimpsed the figure of a man at some distance, half hidden behind a cow-tree.

The promoter eased his sweetheart to the ground, after the manner of dignified men when discovered in an unconventionality. He stood with one arm, consciously—one might almost say conscientiously—around her waist, because not to touch her at all would admit a fault.

The newcomer proved to be Nunes. Whether he had been spying or simply passing by, Lassiter could not be sure. However, the tone of Nunes' conversation a little while before suggested the former.

A certain woodenness seized all three as Nunes passed by. To touch Tilita's waist became an effort. Likewise it was clear by the way the Colombian walked that he wanted to stop and say something, but he could find no leg to stop on. He bid fair to be carried past by dint of his own mechanism.

Then the ludicrous quality of the situation came, to Lassiter's relief. Certain lines from “Hamlet” twinkled into his mind and seemed to fit the Colombian:

Then the absurdity of treating like this a man who had goaded one of his mules across the Andes thawed out Lassiter. He called—

“I thought you were going around the lake with Birdsong, Nunes?”

The Colombian whirled around and went through a great show of having seen them for the first time.

“Ah, Señor Lassiter'—and the señorita, too!”

Lassiter removed his arm with a certain sense of relief.

“I was just thinking of you,” proceeded Nunes, continuing his air of discovery, “I was just thinking of you, señor. I wanted to say, I do not follow my dear brother Birdsong in condemning you.”

“That's very good of you, Nunes.”

“Indeed, it is a matter of principle with me, señor. Between ourselves, religion is a lonesome thing—I don't blame you at all—I—” All this while he had kept his eyes painstakingly off of Tilita. Now he glanced at her, shivered and forgot what he meant to say, for he repeated emptily, “I don't blame any one for—for anything”

“Are you going to assist Birdsong in his work?” inquired the New Yorker to help him out of his difficulty.

“N-no, señor. I—er—I am working on—I'm working on a fishing boat now—that's how I came to be passing by here—I'm working on a fishing boat now.”

He was evidently manufacturing the explanation of his presence out of than air.

“So you are going to fish?”

“Si.”

“Where is your boat?”

Nunes nodded vaguely up the lake.

“Are you building it yourself?”

“Si.”

The situation was beginning to develop into a comedy.

“I'd like to see it.”

Balthasar spread a deprecating hand.

“Oh, it—it's an ordinary boat”

“Just to see what sort of a boat you could make—Would you like a look, too, Tilita?”

The girl was curious at once to see Balthasar's boat. Both of them started toward the muleteer.

“It's a long way through the sun, senorita,” warned the saddle-colored man uncomfortably.

Lassiter bit his lip. He was not sure whether the girl saw the joke or not.

“Oh, Tilita likes the sun—she soaks it up.”

Balthasar shuddered.

“I am complimented if the señorita cares to see my poor boat”

He saw they were going to follow him and he moved vaguely off up the sand.

THE promoter followed his rival with unsmiling mirth. Then, he was still more amused at Balthasar's plan out of the difficulty. The Colombian proceeded straight up the shoreline through the sun and hot sand. Necessarily they would find a boat sooner or later. Presently they did come in sight of something far away on the sand. After a little while Nunes called over his- shoulder.

“I was just revamping an old bolsa, señor.”

When they reached it, sure enough, there was an old boat for which some one was making a sort of reed cover. Balthasar's eyes had been better than Lassiter's.

The promoter looked at it idly.

“What are you going to do with such a cover, Nunes?”

Nunes looked at the cover.

“It will keep in the fish, señor”

“Keep in the fish!”

“And the waves out—in a storm, señor”.

Lassiter could hardly remain sober.

“If the storms get too bad, Nunes,” he said gravely, “I believe I would row to the bank, if I were you—How do you weave it?”

The Colombian sat down among the bundles of reeds and cords of nipa palms and began bundling them into the long strakes of which the queer top was composed. He did exceedingly well at it for a first attempt.

The promoter complimented the muleteer's work and got away in time to keep from laughing and spoiling the farce. As he walked back down the beach, he looked back over his shoulder once or twice. As far as he could see, Nunes was still seated in the hot sand, twisting somebody's reeds and cordage, keeping up his pretense.

The promoter asked his companion how fishermen ever used a top to a bolsa. Tilita had never heard of a bolsa having a top.

When they were well away, Lassiter explained the joke to his companion. To Lassiter's surprize she seemed not at all amused.

“Si. I saw it was not his bolsa,” she answered gravely; and a little later, “He can't help creeping after me, primo; he told me so himself—” And she glanced back at the solitary figure in the long glare of yellow sand swinging around the lake.

After that, the incident somehow lost zest in Lassiter's own eyes. Apparently he had overrated its humor.

Lassiter and the Incan girl did not stop at the cow-trees, but continued down the lake to the temple of the sun. The lake itself narrowed to a stream in its eastern part, flowed toward the enormous façade, then turned and swept north and eventually fell into some subterranean cavity in the side of the crater.

It was in the long “f-shaped” neck of land thus cut off that Lassiter and Tilita had strung their limed cords for birds. The place was a perfect aviary, perhaps because the water cut off, to some extent, vermin and small animals that prey on nestlings.

It was a full three miles to their trapping grounds and the lovers followed the edge of the forest to escape the ardor of high noon. As they wound in and out, they caught full glimpses, and partial glimpses of the enormous façade of the teocalla. In the fierce white light of the meridian, the great alto relief appeared harsh, almost forbidding.

When they were within perhaps a mile of the temple, the girl paused and stared through the dancing heat, then pointed excitedly, directing Lassiter's eyes. After some blinking, the promoter made out what appeared to be a little string of ants crawling out of the main entrance. Naturally, they were priests, quite a band of them. Their almost imperceptible fine of march across the façade renewed the Stendill agent's shock at its prodigious reach.

Tilita was quite excited.

“Come, let's hurry down and see whose it is!”

“Whose what is?”

“Niña.”

“Those: things aren't babies—they are priests!”

“Certainly they aren't babies—certainly—” She tried to keep from laughing, colored slightly, then controlled herself and said very sedately—

“A new niña has come to Motobatl—I wonder who its madre is?”

She stared a moment longer with the engrossed eyes of a woman over the thrill of a new life; then suddenly she seized Lassiter's arm, snuggled a moment to his side, and next instant went skipping down the beach toward the temple.

The promoter was put to it to keep up with the nymph. Within fifty yards he began to weary.

“Hold on,” he panted, “the baby's parentage will keep—I fancy it's Chacala's.”

Tilita gave him a backward nod.

“Oh, yes, I'm sure it's Chacala's and old Xauxa's.”

“Old Xauxa's”

“Yes, old Xauxa's,” chirped the girl. “She must be twenty-two or maybe three.”

Lassiter slowed down abruptly.

“Here,” he said in a different voice, “there's no use running.”

He walked deliberately to the margin of the sand where the grass kept his feet from sinking into its hot depths.

Tilita slowed up obediently and joined him.

“Why, what's the matter?” she asked, looking curiously into his face.

“Oh, nothing—nothing at all—” He made a little gesture and stood looking with a kind of ache at this brief voluptuousness before him. The child—the girl—the young woman—whatever she was, became grave, and then concerned.

“Primo,” she divined, with a little wrinling of her brows, “Primo, is—is it I—Don't you love me?”

The man bent over her in a kind of anguish. He pressed his mouth to her lips. The fragrance of the cow-tree milk surrounded him. She lifted herself to him and held him with extraordinary passion, no doubt with the niña motif drumming in her heart.

It was rather a bizarre performance, such a flux of erotic despair in the furnace of sunshine.

HE girl pursued the man's unhappiness with a hundred hurried questions. What was there about her that made him sad? Was she not beautiful? Her grandmother, who was a fourth Spanish blood, was beautiful. She was very like her grandmother.

They talked on about the grandmother. When asked how she knew, the girl said she could see her abuela (grandmother) any day that her beautiful abuela did not journey through the sky in the mansions of the sun.

“You can still see her?” queried the promoter curiously.

“Oh, yes, any one can—there is a little crevice in the temple. When the sun passes through the teocalla at sundown, perhaps my abuela may get out of the sun and remain for a day in the temple.”

Such a quaint notion pleased Lassiter. He glanced up at the solar faculence. When he took down his eyes, dark splotches swam over the landscape.

“Do you suppose she is in the temple today?”

“Had she known we wanted to see her she would have remained in Motobatl,” assured Tilita, also looking up at the sun.

Lassiter smiled at such an easy loophole.

“Of course, if she isn't in the temple—she didn't know.”

“But if we want to see her she will know—dwellers in the sun know all we do and think,” pronounced the girl reverently.

This closed the loophole.

“Then she will be there?”

“If we want to see her and ask her blessing.”

At Lassiter's desire they decided to see the grandmother, and set out with a renewed object for the teocalla.

They walked quickly, and by the time the sun had declined into the west, they were walking across the vast approach to the temple. This was a pavement that fronted the temple like the piazzas before Italian cathedrals. It was a clearway paved with hexagonal blocks of and fronted some three quarters of a mile of vast pilasters. Certain routes were worn in the spread of pavement where endless feet had tramped its breadth. Of these human traces worn in stone, the deepest path led to the main entrance; two more approached the two side entrances; and one pursued its way straight across the field of masonry.

Such endless ashlar work, such worn footways connoted a once vast population in Motobatl. The people gathered together in its bowl must be but a remnant of a human ant-like nest that wrought such labors. Whither had they gone? It was the query of the sphinx.

The vast façade was utterly deserted. The priests who had gone forth left no tenders. Lassiter walked on up through the heat to the great carved structure. The bases of the main pilasters were some thirty feet in diameter, but they arose to such heights they were drawn out to airiness. Looking up, Lassiter saw the ancient architect had mastered some new principle of proportion that prevented the façade from appearing to lean outward.

The whole structure vibrated with heat. The crowns of the columns far above the piazza were blurred. Heat filled Lassiter's clothes. Sweat stung his eyes and trickled down his skin like insects.

Along the outer edge of the piazza flowed the stream from the lake. North of the long pavement, a slender triangle of jungle set in between the river and the cliffs and continued to the point where the stream debouched into the palisades. From the pavement before the temple, they could just hear the faint murmur of its violence.

When Tilita passed the northern entrance of the teocalla, she diverged from the beaten path toward the jungle and turned to a little fault in the great façade. It was so well masked by an accident of the gigantic carving, that Lassiter never would have observed the aperture. It was evidently the result of some modern earthquake and was not designed by the sculptor because the vertical carvings on the exterior did not correspond exactly with the crack. The swell of the scroll on the capital of one of the columns had been split in two. The solid stone radiated tangible heat when Lassiter approached it.

“Now, if my abuela has not gone up to heaven with the sun,” began Tilita, placing her face in the aperture. A moment later—

“No, there she is.”

She drew back and gave place to Lassiter. He placed his hands on two great projections of sculpture and peered through solid stone, some twenty feet thick.

As soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the softened illumination, he saw he was looking into a chamber filled with many-colored lights. He sensed the color value of the light by the nude statue of a woman that knelt in direct line with the aperture. A dozen subtle reflections from the statue bespoke the colorful illumination. Its blanched surface was touched with pinkish, mauve and pavonine tints.

The remarkable beauty of contour held Lassiter. The hair of the statue was done with actual human hair, after the fashion of the un-Hellenized Indians. The lips were scarlet. The eyes seemed to be inset of dark stones. Even a faint pilosity was suggested under the uplifted arms. In short, the sculptor of this kneeling Venus lapsed from splendid inspiration into over-detail.

Lassiter was just regretting this slight disfigurement of a genuine triumph in sculpture when the eyelids of the statue seemed to close.

Lassiter leaned forward with a slack jaw. He turned and encountered Tilita's face almost touching his.

“My God!” he aspirated. “She's alive!”

The girl gave a little restrained laugh, for she was in a holy place.

“Certainemente—She is my abuela”

Lassiter looked back. The face of the statue was as like Tilita's as a reflection, except it was paler.

While the promoter was looking he saw the eyes were open again.