It was the manner of their laying and the careful building of a scaffold on each side of either pyre that held Rosemary McClean's attention--called all the rebellious womanhood within her to interfere--and drew her nearer.
Soon the priest noticed her--a cotton-skirted wraith amid the smoke--and shouted to the guards behind; one of them answered, laughing coarsely, and Rosemary understood enough of the dialect he used to grit her teeth with shame and anger.

The men left off building, and, directed by the priest, came toward her in a ragged line to cut her off from closer approach; she stood, then--examined the new pyres as carefully as she could--walked to another vantage-point and viewed them sideways--then turned her back.
"Oh, the brutes!" she ejaculated.

There were tears in her voice, as well as helpless anger.

"There is not one devil, there are a million, and they all live here!" She looked back again once, trembling with an overmastering hate, directed less at the priest who grinned back at her than at the loathsome rite he represented.

In two actual words, she cursed him.
It was the first time she had ever cursed anybody in her life, and the wickedness of doing it swept over her as a relief.