"Kharvani!" said the High Priest to himself again, and the two Rajputs
stood still like men dumfounded, and stared and stared and stared.
They knew Kharvani's temple. Who was there in Hanadra, Christian
or Mohammedan or Hindu, who did not? The show-building of the city,
the ancient, gloomy, wonderful erection where bats lived in the dome
and flitted round Kharvani's image, the place where every one must
go who needed favors of the priests, the central hub of treason and
intrigue, where every plot was hatched and every rumor had its origin--
the ultimate, mazy, greedy, undisgorging goal of every bribe and
every blackmail-wrung rupee!
They knew, too, as every one must know who has ever been inside the
place, the amazing, awe-inspiring picture of Kharvani painted on the
inner wall; of Kharvani as she was idealized in the days when priests
believed in her and artists thought the labor of a lifetime well employed
in painting but one picture of her--Kharvani the sorrowful, grieving
for the wickedness of earth; Kharvani, Bride of Siva, ready to intercede
with Siva, the Destroyer, for the helpless, foolish, purblind sons
of man.
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