till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched
down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold
afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house.
From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed
could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there
Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then he
imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down
with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god
lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy
impatience. And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the
last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He
knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed
smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two
the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer,
but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman,
would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow
ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior
wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and
the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of
his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his
threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to
the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had
been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long