Then he glanced at the agonized face of the doomed woman, and just as the wand began to bend, his human love and pity conquered.
"May He Whom I blaspheme forgive me," he murmured, adding aloud, "I will do sacrifice." Taking the incense in his hand now he cast it into the flames upon the altar, repeating mechanically after the Shadid: "By this sacrifice and homage, body and soul I give myself to you and worship you, El and Baaltis, the only true gods." ***** The echo of Aziel's voice died away, and the fumes of the incense rose in a straight dense column upon that quiet air.

To his tormented mind, it seemed as though its smoke took the form of an avenging angel, holding in the hand a sword of flame, wherewith to drive away his perjured soul from Heaven, as our first forefathers were driven from the shining gates of paradise.

Yes, and they were not human, those spectators who, in the intense glow of the sunset, stood in their still ranks and stared at him with wide and eager eyes.

Surely they were fiends red with the blood of men, fiends gathered from the Pit to bear everlasting witness to the unpardonable sin of his apostasy..