head bent in the black scarf, it was Carlota, creeping along on her knees to the altar steps.
The whole church was frozen in horror. “Saviour! Saviour! Jesus! Oh Holy Virgin!” Carlota was moaning to herself as she crawled along.
It seemed hours before she reached the altar steps. Ramón still stood below the great Quetzalcoatl image with arm upflung.
Carlota crouched black at the altar steps and flung up the white hands and her white face in the frenzy of the old way.
“Lord! Lord!” she cried, in a strange ecstatic voice that froze Kate’s bowels with horror: “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”
Carlota strangled in her ecstasy. And all the while, Ramón, the living Quetzalcoatl, stood before the flickering altar with naked arm upraised, looking with dark, inalterable eyes down upon the woman.
Throes and convulsions tortured the body of Carlota. She