He had frowned, and involuntarily recoiled towards the wall when he found that his guide had disappeared, and that he stood alone in the heart of the jungle.

But strangely enough, even as he stood staring at a white wall in front of him, a sudden apathy had fallen upon him, also a strong disinclination to move hand or foot; in fact, he remembered laughing stupidly, and pulling out his cigarette case with the intention of soothing a distinct sense of irritation aroused by something which hammered incessantly upon his inner consciousness, warning him to be on the look out.

He remembered also looking once or twice in the direction of the temple door with the feeling that someone was on the point of coming out towards him, and then he had slipped contentedly to the ground, yawned, and gone to sleep.

All the sounds of a jungle dawn had greeted him on his awaking: a monkey had swung itself up to the top of the ruined wall where it had sat grimacing at him; an adjutant bird had clapped at his boot with its huge bill as it stalked past him towards the door; and he had found himself bound by waist and wrists to a stout ring in a wall which still held traces of brilliant colouring.



CHAPTER XLI

"And unto wizards that peep and that mutter."—The Bible.

Like some infuriated bull he had fought and tugged at his chains and shouted for deliverance, until clouds of birds flew skywards in fright, and blood had spurted from his finger-tips and stained the shirt about his middle.

Thongs of hide sound inadequate against the strength of a man, but steel chains are weak compared with them for resistance, and to strive against them simply results in pure agony if they have been thoroughly soaked by the Indian dew which almost amounts to rain, and dried by the Indian sun which almost amounts to a furnace.

Of course, in a properly constructed novel he would have been left in a position which would have enabled him to gnaw the hide with his strong white teeth, or rub it until it wore through against some sharp stone.

But this he could not do because his wrists were bound behind, leaving the space of a foot or two between his waist and the wall; and when he leant back he had the tragic outline of a modern Prometheus bound; when he strained forward, that of one of Muller's pupils undergoing treatment for the development of the chest.

Neither could he, contort himself as he might, have brought his teeth within gnawing distance of deliverance; moreover, ruins exposed for centuries to the soft manipulation of a jungle climate, show no sharp stones; they are rounded and polished by the passage of time, soft feet, and that which crawls upon its belly.

At length, however, peace quite strangely fell upon him, and though he could not move, the agony of his hands and lacerated waist vanished entirely; such perfect peace that he leant back against the wall and idly tried to count the myriad tiny dainty hoof marks in the dust between the doorway facing him, and the ruined archway on his left.

He did not think it strange when turning his head he discovered an ancient priest seated against the wall with his mahogany coloured old body outlined against the dull blues and reds of the painted stones; and his eyes, bright with religious fervour, fixed through the crumbling arch, beyond the delicate sun-dried leaves, the blazing sun, and the steel blue heavens, upon Eternity.

The fine old man had no intention of torturing the white man, he had merely bound him to the ring until his goddess should inspire him, her servant, with her wishes concerning this stranger who was intimately connected with the white woman in the care of his beloved disciple, even Madhu Krishnaghar.

Neither did he intend to starve the white man nor bring him to the point of madness from thirst; but accustomed to hours and days of self-subjection in which he neither ate, drank nor felt the need of material sustenance, he failed to take into account the inner cravings of a man when he had been tied for two nights to a ring in the wall.

And he sprang to his feet and crossed the floor when Cuxson, after an interval of forty-eight hours during which he had neither eaten nor drunk, tortured by cramp from his waist to his feet caused by the strangling hold of the hide thong, with his heart pounding the blood against his brain until it shook, and his arms feeling like burning staves ending in blocks of ice, suddenly scrambled somehow to his knees, shouted, and fell forward with the soles of his feet against the wall, and the whole weight of his heavy body hanging upon the wrists.

It was but the work of an instant and a flashing knife and he lay face down upon the floor at the feet of the priest who passed swiftly through the doorway out into the jungle, and returning as swiftly, bound great green shining leaves about the wounds, and squatting on his heels gently massaged the black and swollen arms.

A holy man! a Hindu priest touching the contaminating flesh of an infidel! Impossible!

There are many methods of purification from contamination, but the main point in the priest's mental process of self-extenuation was that an infidel awaiting the verdict of the Great Mother should not be allowed to die.

Therefore more green and glistening leaves were placed upon the floor, and food, and water in coarse earthenware, set upon them, until Cuxson had revived sufficiently to eat, and enter into conversation with the priest, who, seeing no reason to withhold the information sought, and secure in the knowledge that the spreading jungle tied the sahib to the temple even more securely than the thongs of hide, gradually unfolded to him the dark history of the girl he loved.

"Eighteen years," began the tranquil voice of the old man, "as the sahibs count the passing of the moons, have gone since a high caste woman knelt at full moon in this temple at the foot of the altar of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction.

"Kali the Black One; daughter of the Himalayas, wife of Siva! Durga the inaccessible, Uma so sweet!

"Chandika the fierce, Parvati who steppeth lightly upon the mountains.

"Bhairavi the terrible, Kali of death, Kali! Kali!"

The old priest, who had leapt to his feet under the exaltation of his worship, sank down again upon the floor, and continued his tale in the Indian tongue.

"The high caste woman, chief wife of a great prince of Northern India, held in her arms her first, her only son, a weakling, a sickly babe nigh unto death. Thrice had she been shamed by the birth of a woman child, and now her crown, her glory, her great gift unto her lord was like to die.

"Followed only by her body servant she had sped from her palace in the shadows of the Everlasting Hills, even unto the southernmost limits of Bengal, a pilgrim to this holy, secret temple where I pass my last days in sacrifice and worship; I, even I, foremost guru, once teacher of the Thugs, those beloved servants of Kali—before the law of the white man forbade their sacrifices unto the goddess."

Jan Cuxson, knowing of the sacrifices both human and animal offered in bygone days to the terrible goddess, shivered as the horror of the place seemed to close in upon him.

"The high caste woman demanding from the Goddess of Death the boon of life for her son, cast her jewels upon the altar and made promise of cattle and grain and her three daughters as handmaidens in the secret places of the temple. And I, aforetime great among the Thugs, lamented that I had but a coal black kid to offer as a sacrifice, for behold, Kali demands life for life, and will not be denied.

"Flowers flung by the woman, O white man, strewed the stone floor upon which I have worn a path during the passing of the years; hundreds of small lights flickered in every corner, causing the shadows to dance about these weary feet and the eyes of the great gods to shine from the corners of the roof; and without I heard against the wall the rubbing of the great tiger as it waited for the blood sacrifice which it nightly devoured before the dawn, the striped cat upon which Kali rides forth at night on her journeyings through the jungle.

"Even as I plunged the sacrificial knife into the neck of the unworthy sacrifice, I heard footsteps as of one running swiftly; and behold, there came a low caste, pock-marked woman up the middle of the temple, who flung herself at the feet of Kali, laying a sleeping babe upon the altar steps."

"Ah!" barely whispered Jan Cuxson with his eyes fixed upon the fanatical old face.

"And behold, the low caste woman was ayah in the services of one, even a great colonel-sahib, who, being raised above his fellows, was hastening back across the Black Water to his own land, taking with him his one wife, and the one child of their union.

"Loving the white girl child with the great strange love of the servant of India for the offspring of the feringhee, the ayah had secretly brought the babe in the absence of the mem-sahib upon visits of farewell, that I might dedicate her to the goddess, binding her in spirit for ever to the land of her birth."

The white man sat in silence when the old man sprang to his feet, standing relentless and formidable in the light of the one lamp.

"See'st thou? See'st thou, sahib, my sin? The sacrifice was within my hands, and yet I spared the child because of the woman's beseechings. I hesitated, yea! I even asked a sign. Aye! and the sign was good, twice pleasing to the Goddess of Death, for behold the owl hooted not, neither was the voice of the jackal uplifted as the doe, coming from the right, looked through the open door.

"With the high caste woman I made covenant, that her male child in return for his life should be a servant of the Black One, obeying in all things the mandates of her priests.

"And I held those sleeping babes upon my arm, and within the lips of the girl child I placed the goor, the sacred sugar, and around her neck the roomal, the noose of sacrifice. And I cut the sign of Kali between the breasts of the man child and between the breasts of the woman child, and marked him between the brows with her blood, and marked her upon the forehead with his blood, so that his mind should be her mind. And her will I bent to my will, that her eyes should open in sleep at the light of the full moon, and that she should go forth upon the mission of the Black One, making sacrifice to the spouse of Siva.

"And yet, though she be bound to the secret temple and to Kali, and to the son of princes until death shall release her, the Great Mother is not pleased, nay, her wrath is terrible at the averted sacrifice, and India, my land, has suffered through my fault."

The priest stood motionless, staring down unseeingly upon the man at his feet who spoke softly.

"And what became of the white child?"

"The white child, the infant feringhee? She lay asleep in my arms with eyes wide open, and the high caste woman, picking up a jewel, even one of the colour and shape of cat's eye, smeared it with the blood of the kid, placed it above the heart of Kali, and then hung it by a slender golden chain about the neck of the woman child. And the women, content, departed, bearing with them the united babes, but since that ill-begotten night my land has travailed in agony, stricken with plague and pestilence and famine!"

"And?" Cuxson scarcely breathed the word.

The light of the moon slipped over the ruined wall, drawing a nimbus round the old white head as the tall thin figure in the snow-white garments swayed slightly.

"I waited for the command of Kali, and after many years I sent my beloved disciple, the son of princes, across the Black Water to bring the white woman by the force of his will back to the land of her birth and up to the altar steps. And now I wait—I wait—for a little, little while."

The old voice rose to a thin shout of triumph which lapsed into silence as, totally oblivious of his prisoner, he sank to the ground, lost, quite suddenly, in that wonderful abstraction of the East in which the native can find escape from the trials of life at odd moments, and in unaccountably odd places.

During the long silence that followed, Jan Cuxson sat patiently puffing at his pipe and trying to piece the strange tale together, until at an advanced hour of the night he once more felt the hawk-like eyes fixed upon his face.

Eagerly he picked up the thread of the story as though there had been no lapse.

"You mesmerised her, you say, eighteen years ago, and you pretend you can still bend her to your will?"

"Nay, Sahib! Through me Kali the Terrible imprinted her will upon the babe's tender mind those many moons ago!"

Cuxson shook his head.

"You can't make me believe that—it's rubbish—like the mango tree and rope trick—it's impossible, simply impossible to make strong-minded, level-headed people do things against their will."

In such wise does the westerner account to his own satisfaction for the mysterious workings of the East.

The old man said no word, but looked steadily between the young man's eyes.

"If the sahib will look to his right hand!"

Cuxson turned his head and started.

Eyes glaring, tail thrashing the ground, and ears flattened to the great head, a tiger half crouched.

"The devil!" he ejaculated, as the mouth of the great animal twisted spasmodically. "Here's a fix."

"The sahib will place his hand upon the tiger's head."

"Not much!"

"The sahib is afraid!"

The quiet scorn of the words struck Cuxson like a whip, and he stretched out his hand impulsively towards the smooth head with flattened ears and glaring eyes.

There was not a sound, though the tail swished the ground, and the huge mouth opened slowly, showing the splendid ivories.

"The sahib, if he is not afraid, will close his hand firmly upon the throat!"

Cuxson's hand closed gently upon the striped skin; then he exclaimed sharply on perceiving that the only thing his hand grasped was air.

"Why—what—how the——!"

The old man nodded his head gently, and answered without a smile. "It was the will of the Black One that the sahib should see the steed upon which she roams the jungle at night!"

But Cuxson was British, and would not be convinced.

"I don't believe it," he said shortly. "That was a tame animal, which strays in and out of the temple like a tame cat."

"Will the sahib look at the dust upon the ground. Is there sign of feet, marks of the body, or the lashing of the tail upon the dust?"

Truly the dust, save for the deer marks, was undisturbed, but Cuxson shook his head stoutly, and refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes.

"The sahib will not believe! Then will I make her, the white woman, see thee, the man she desires as husband, a prisoner in the House of Kali, covered in blood, and she will hasten forthwith to thee—and to me!"

Cuxson sprang to his feet with murder in his eyes, but stopped and flung out his hands as though to thrust aside some obstacle.

The priest laughed softly.

"O babe in wisdom! Behold, thou shalt not be bound, yet shalt thou not stir beyond yon temple wall until she come, and with her the son of princes who yearns for her; then shall I lift my will from thee and tie thee to the wall that thou mayst behold the double sacrifice of love and life made to Kali the Terrible."

The priest was gone, and Jan Cuxson sat down upon a fallen block of masonry, covering his face with his wounded hands; and faintly from the temple echoed the voice of the priest as he prayed to his god before projecting his will across the space that divided him from the white woman.

Only for a little moment of despondency, and then he sat back and shook his great shoulders with the light of battle in his eyes, and grim determination in every line of the powerful jaw.

How he was going to circumvent the priest and save his beloved he did not know—he had no plan, but—he was going to pull it off.

"The son of princes," he said, addressing a monkey which had flung a stick at him from the top of the wall, "why I'd trust my dear, bewitched or not, with a thousand sons of princes. I love her and she loves me, you gibbering bit of fur, and d'you think anything could stand against that. Let her come! Just let her be within reach of my arms, then you'll see what you will see. Let the priest play into my hands, and bring her here, the sooner the better, for that is exactly what I want."

And he laughed as he refilled his pipe, blessing the old priest for his consideration in annexing naught but his rifle and revolver.

Which is just about the simplest way of starting to get out of a tight corner.

Ignoring all obstacles, owning to no defeat. The splendid heritage of the English speaking race.

CHAPTER XLII

"A good name is better than precious ointment."—The Bible.

"And in its light the Star of Love aglow, Shone with her beacon fire, a guide and guardian still."—Dante's Inferno.

In the middle of the night Leonie lay face downwards upon her bed in the great Eastern Hotel.

All the luggage she had brought with her from England was stacked around the small room, and even in the dressing-room; in fact, there was that unfinished, unpacked air about the whole place which is inseparable from anyone in India who is in the throes of going home.

She had returned on the wings of panic from Benares, only to find that the gossip which had been circulated about her had arrived well in advance; and that, like crows after a dust cart, what remained of the city's female population was busy pulling her to a thousand pieces with claws and beaks sharpened by the million irritations of the hot weather.

A dignified bearer had salaamed gravely, and handed her a chit upon her arrival at the bungalow, where her friend was braving the pestilence of the hot weather in comradeship with her husband, who, in the secret places of his heart, wished to goodness she had gone to the hills with the rest of 'em.

Her luggage, the letter stated, had been shifted to the hotel, where a room had been taken for her, and there would, it seemed, be plenty of accommodation on the City of Sparta which would be sailing in three weeks' time for home.

And that was all!

It is wise in the hot weather to pull the purdah, which is the Indian way of saying to shut the door, in the face of a young and unattached girl with a tawny head and opalescent eyes; especially if the dust has long been undisturbed upon the threshold of the secret places of the male heart supposed to be entirely in your keeping.

For days she had remained in her room, not daring to face the curious glances, and subdued whispers, of the few visitors to be met with in the marble desolation of the front hall; and not for worlds would she have used the telephone for fear of the direct snub the wire would surely have transmitted.

Food she hardly touched; sleep she did, heavily, waking dull and unrefreshed; and for hours she would sit and stare into the corners, or peer over her shoulder into the stifling shadows, or study her face in the mirror, wondering if her strange eyes were the eyes of a mad woman.

The bearer had caused her long moments of worry.

The morning after her arrival at the hotel, instead of the little, dusky, nimble, monkey-eyed man of the night before, there had entered one, tall and dignified, who had cleared a space on the table beside her bed, deposited a bunch of flowers and the chotar hazri, or early tea, and raising his hand to his turban had departed.

Quite a usual procedure! But wakeful Leonie, who had indifferently watched him through the mosquito curtain and from under the pillow frill into which she had burrowed her head, frowned when something familiar in the man or his movements had particularly attracted her attention.

Most natives look alike to the newcomer in India, but she frowned again as she chewed the crust of buttered toast and racked her brain fruitlessly for a clue.

One by one she went over each city and place she had visited, each railway journey she had made, each hotel she had stayed in. Then had poured out a cup of tea and given it up.

Having fruitlessly worried over this seemingly insignificant detail of an Indian day's routine, she had impatiently countermanded the early tea for the following mornings, and had indifferently left the really lovely flowers which came up regularly on every tray, to the fantastic arranging of the little dusky man who looked at her like a wistful monkey, and slipped nimbly about the room in her service; and who, likewise, rejoiced greatly over certain backsheesch which he, with the joy the native has in all intrigue, imagined to be the outcome of love.

I wonder if Europeans in India know with what interest their bearers or ayahs watch, and what detailed accounts they could and do give of their masters' or mistresses' love affairs, great and small, legitimate and illegitimate.

It is to be surmised that they do not!

They were not the eyes of the nimble little bearer that were watching from the bathroom on this particular night, when Leonie very quietly raised herself in her sleep and, flinging back the netting, sat staring silently into the corner nearest the door.

She half knelt, half sat, with a faint look of surprise on her face, which changed slowly to absolute amazement, then to the faintest suspicion of love and happiness, during which transition her smile reflected the glorious lights of the seventh heaven.

"Oh, beloved!" she exclaimed, and laughed softly, the sound falling eerily in the absolute stillness of the night, the shadows dancing eerily upon the plaster walls as she threw out her arms.

She flung them out in a beautiful abandonment of love, and the hidden eyes glistened as they watched the fingers slowly curl and clench as a look of horror crept gradually over the whole face, blotting out its sweetness and light, changing it into a veritable mask of terror.

A horrible dream! A nightmare!

If you like! The label of casual explanation, tied by the string of ignorance, never did much harm to any psychological package.

Leonie was apparently asleep and evidently seeing things, so perforce she must have been dreaming, for what else could she have been doing!

Anyway her heavy, unrefreshing sleep, induced by fatigue, mental weariness, or a super-will, was very gradually being turned into a thing of moving shapes.

The shadows in the corner had lightened and darkened and lightened again, lifting at last to show a half-ruined, roofless room and a banyan tree outside an almost perfect archway.

A wick in a coarse earthenware saucer flickered feebly in one corner, two deer pattered swiftly across the flags and out of the door, and very slowly a man jerked himself on to his knees and twisted his death-white face towards the coming dawn.

Jan Cuxson suffering the tortures of the damned, chained by his rashness and his love to a ring in the wall with thongs of raw hide, which were drawing blood from his wrists and staining his shirt about his waist.

This way and that he wrenched and tore, then stopped quite still glaring into the shadows.

This way and that again, hurling himself back, against the wall, flinging himself forward until the agony of the thongs seemed to be beyond all human endurance.

Just for one ghastly instant, one second, he stopped, staring straight into the eyes of his beloved, seeming to call insistently for help, his face distorted until it lost all human semblance; then pitched forward, hanging unconscious upon the thongs just as a priest, thin and gaunt, with knife gleaming in his hand, rushed towards him; and Leonie, with a piercing shriek, sprang straight out of bed, flung herself violently against the wall, and woke up with her hands feebly groping over the coloured plaster.

And next evening the news that Lady Hickle had left the hotel without her luggage, destination unknown, streaked like lightning through the almost deserted Chowringhee, the Strand Road, the Maidan, and clubs and bungalows.

What a godsend is a bit of gossip in the hot weather, when your neighbour's looks, wardrobe, and morals have been threshed bare; when the mail has not arrived; and the hill news has only served to upset your temperamental digestion; in fact there were little whirlpools of excitement in the Saturday Club's stifling atmosphere, serving to add a passing zest to the heat-stricken evening hours and pegs which no amount of ice seemed to cool.

Every man, high or low caste, white or not, who met Leonie, figuratively cast himself at her slender feet.

Men ran to do her service, they smiled in doing it, they mopped their heated brows and cheered up, even at one hundred and two in the shade, when she happened along to ask some good office with a smile on her red mouth.

She had paid her outrageous bill, left orders concerning her outrageous luggage, and walked out of the hotel almost unnoticed, because of the witchery of her most gracious manner which served to make her path easy—where men were concerned of course; and without let or hindrance she had cashed an outrageous cheque at her bank which left a few rupees to her credit, and had walked through the building to give orders as to her mail, and ask advice of the fair-haired, courteous young Englishman who rose from his table as she turned away with the sweetest words of thanks for the trouble he had taken in finding out for her how to get quickly to the Sunderbunds.

"I wonder why she's going there, of all places, in this infernal heat, and in such a desperate hurry, and I wonder if she's going alone!" he said half aloud as he drew beetles on his blotting-paper, and frowned as somebody, breathless from heat, sank heavily into the chair on the other side and slapped some documents on to the table.

Leonie was acting quite subconsciously in all she did on that blazing morning.

Which does not mean that she was still walking in her sleep with her eyes wide open, or that she was not aware of her own movements.

Not at all. She was wide awake with a fixed determination to get to the temple in the Sunderbunds as quickly as she could.

Why?—well, who knows?

As far as the dream was concerned her mind had been a perfect blank when she had awakened the previous night groping over the plastered walls; but branded across it, in letters of blood, had been the one word Sunderbunds, standing out clearly against the fog which surrounded something terrible she could not understand. No, she did not understand, but she knew that everywhere she looked she saw the lettering; and that every sound she heard, the soft slur of the lift, the throb of the motor engine, the call of the indefatigable kite, cried the one word aloud; and that in some inexplicable way the resistless summons was connected with the man she loved.

What was she to know of the working of an eastern mind in the secret places of a Hindu temple?

Neither did it strike her as strange that a taxi, with its flag up for hire, should be standing opposite the bank door, blocking the way for arriving vehicles; or that, having persistently refused many irate would-be hirers, and patiently listened to the asperity of their remarks, the driver should have opened the door and held it back as she walked straight across the pavement, got in, and, without hesitating gave the address of the Whiteway Laidlaw Company.

It might have seemed odd to a stranger; still more odd would it have appeared to any chance passer-by if they had overheard the following short conversation as Leonie got out at the shop.

"Can you drive me afterwards to Kulna?" she asked in her best but inefficient Hindustani.

"Even so, mem-sahib," promptly replied the lithe, good-looking son of the East as he salaamed. "If the mem-sahib will pardon her servant he would advise driving to Jessore and resting the night there at the dak bungalow, that is if the mem-sahib is not in too great haste!"

Leonie frowned, only understanding half of what was said.

"Don't you speak English?"

"No, mem-sahib; but my brother, who lives near the New Market but a minute's drive from here, speaks the mem-sahib's language. Also, he is a good bearer, having travelled widely. If the mem-sahib permits, I will call him to accompany her on her journey to Jessore."

"Very well!" said Leonie, beckoning to a boy, who sprang towards her with a huge basket which, for a few annas, he would carry round the entire building after her, and into which she would throw her purchases of all sizes and shapes.

He emerged some time later jubilantly staggering with basket and hands full.

What a priceless mem-sahib who had not once complained about the price!

The brother had materialised! Oh, those brothers and fathers, and mothers and sisters, and all those relations who are always so strangely near at hand in India!

"If I may offer a suggestion," said the soft voice in the delightfully choice English of the educated native of India who has sojourned in England, "it would be that we drive only to Jessore, stopping at Bongong dak bungalow for tiffin. If the mem-sahib is sight-seeing, I will arrange everything in the most convenient and pleasant manner for her. From here to Kulna in one day would be a long and wearisome journey in this great heat."

Leonie half turned with the slightest frown as she passed her hand over her eyes.

Once again had come that suggestion of something familiar—a suggestion too fleeting to be caught.

"You can do exactly as you think best as long as I start for the Sunderbunds to-morrow morning."

"The public boat does not start for three days, mem-sahib."

"I can hire a private launch, can I not? Money is no object, only speed."

"Easily, mem-sahib. Consider it arranged!"

Leonie lifted her head for half a second, showing her face deathly white, the crimson line of her beautiful mouth and the shadow-encircled eyes emphasised by the dark green silk lining of her topee.

She glanced quickly at the dignified figure beside her on the pavement and looked away.

You do not, as a rule, recognise people you have met in your sleep; neither had her memory been impressed with the passing glimpses she had caught of the handsome face in the British Museum and during the chotar shikar.

No, in spite of the tugging of her memory, there was nothing to link this person in the spotless white turban and full-skirted coat of the bearer to her fastidious self.

Neither did that strange anonymous gift of glorious pearls which was round her neck even then, or an unaccounted for mark upon her shoulder, help her in any way.

She leaned back listlessly as her newly acquired bearer arranged the newly bought suit-case and the various packages.

It was an absurd way of starting out on a jungle trip, picking up a car any old how out of the streets, and a bearer from the labyrinths of the bazaar without even glancing at his chits, which, even it she had, would probably have been forgeries.

She had certainly had the sense to put on her knee-high boots and knee-length skirt, a low collared shirt waist and sports coat, also a topee; but, wishing to leave no clue as to her future movements at the hotel, she had slung everything else pell-mell into her trunks, locked and left them to be fetched and stored at her bank.

It had obviated the calling of a car and the giving of an address to the hall porter, but it had forced her to buy everything she might be likely to require for a day or two's sojourn in the waste places of an Indian jungle.

She had thought of everything with one exception, and that, of course, the one item which should have been the most important on the list.

Of weapons of defence she had none.

But then, what was she to know of the workings of the mind of the man sitting with his back to her as the car turned and sped swiftly down the streets, which seem to stretch endlessly, until you strike the heavenly tree-lined road which leads you through Dum Dum and other well-known places to the river edge.



CHAPTER XLIII

"Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for ay removed From the developed brute; a god, Though in the germ."—Browning.

Blazing hot simply did not describe the degree of heat which pressed down upon and around Leonie as she sat totally unconscious of it on the verandah of the Bongong dak bungalow.

For the benefit of those who have not experienced the assorted joys of travelling in India, a dak—pronounced dork—bungalow is a travellers' rest, humble or spacious, presided over or not, as the case may be, by a simple and courteous native. They are to be found dotted about everywhere—in jungles, on roads, and outside ruined cities; and there you can stay for an hour or a night, sleeping in comfort, provided you have brought your own bedding and mosquito netting; eating according to the contents of your hamper.

In the cooler hours vivid flashes of orange and black, or black and red, or turquoise blue and green, or white flit across from tree to tree; parrots chatter, crows scream, and the brain-fever bird soothes or irritates you according to your mood, and you tap your fingers on the table in time to the metallic anvil cry of the coppersmith bird, until a tiger-ant or some such voracious insect claims your undivided attention.

In the heat of noon the only sounds to break the intense stillness are the metallic anvil cry of the aforesaid coppersmith bird, and the never-ceasing call of his brain-fever brother.

Except for your own there is no movement whatever—the voracious insect is always with you.

Quite alone in the bungalow, with her back to the open bedroom, Leonie sat undisturbed, with her eyes fixed unseeingly upon the tree-lined road, and a torrent of disconnected thought swirling through her mind.

Exactly what she was doing, and why she was doing it, she had no idea; she only knew that do it she must, and was content to let it rest.

Programme or plan she had none, only an intolerable desire to get to the ruined temple in the jungle.

For what?

She had no notion! She had to get there quickly, that was all she knew.

She sat on, with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, without stirring; in fact you would have sworn she was asleep so still was she in the silence broken only by the two birds.

She could see the car a little way down the road awaiting her, with the driver curled up sound asleep beside it at the foot of a tree; the bearer asleep too somewhere, she surmised hazily, as the sound of the packing of the hamper had altogether ceased.

And then something, instinct maybe, or whatever you like to label the incorporeal look-out in our psychological crow's nest, whispered to her that it might be wise if she awoke to her surroundings.

There had not been a sound, nevertheless she felt that somebody stood quite near to her.

She did not move her head, but her eyes flashed quickly to right and left, and she frowned ever so slightly when she remembered that her revolver had been left behind in Calcutta, safely tucked away at the bottom of her dressing-case.

As is the usual way when a revolver is owned by woman.

Nothing stirred except the little curls on the nape of her neck, which quivered when she shivered involuntarily.

It happens every day in India! The land where curtains take the place of wooden doors, and a deferential servant on noiseless, unshod feet glides into your chamber unannounced, and stands patiently behind you until it pleases your august self to turn and acknowledge his humble presence.

That's what you think, anyway.

And it takes quite a time to become accustomed to the noiselessness of this proceeding, and to control the start which gives you away completely.

Leonie could stand the uncertainty no longer, she suddenly swept round in her chair, and remained quite still with her mouth slightly open, and her eyes fixed upon the face of her bearer.

He was just behind her chair, his white full-skirted coat touching the back of it, his arms folded; but as Leonie turned he took one step back and salaamed with both hands before his face, completely hiding the blazing eyes for the one second sufficient for them to regain their normal placid, indifferent look, as he gently made it known that all was ready if the mem-sahib desired to depart or to sleep.

Yes, his eyes had blazed as they rested upon the gracious lines of this woman he loved, but whom, before he had known her, he had vowed, in the transports of his religion, to bring unto his god.

Yes! and the whole body of this magnificent being, vowed to holiness by his parents, had trembled as he stood close to her sweet-scented person; so close that it had seemed as though he stood knee deep in a bed of clover at dawn.

Yes! and he was alone with her, with the knowledge of his power upon her mind; yet he would not have touched one hair of her head, nor laid a finger upon her against her will, even though she was absolutely at his mercy, and the inner room was misty with shadows.

They are gentlemen of the finest type, these pure bred sons of India; not the ravening beasts of prey towards women described so minutely, and with such nauseating detail, in various religious and altruistic pamphlets; little literary atrocities written mostly by men and women who have gathered their experiences of the East from an exhibition or two at the White City or Earl's Court, and their data from their own scurrilous minds.

Bad types there are in every country! But for pity's sake let these social reformers stick to the West, and start on those who make it unpleasant, if not unsafe, for an honest, well-groomed woman, with pretty feet and veiled face, to walk slowly by day, or by night, through the so-called decent streets of London town.

Let them leave the fine, cultured men of India to their own gods and their own customs, remembering that their ways are not our ways; for which those of them who have tarried in our country, return thanks as, laying an offering of thanksgiving before their god, they lift the purdah, behind which awaits the modest, gentle little maid; perfumed with the scents of the East instead of the aroma of whisky or brandy pegs allied to the tobacco of Turkey or Virginia; and unbesmirched by the close embrace of the fox-trot which caused a certain Maharajah, on a visit to England, to remark to an Englishwoman:

"Why! I thought——"

Well, perhaps 'twere better that the damning commentary should be left unwritten.

It was late in the evening when Leonie questioned her servant.

"Does the serang know exactly where I want to go? And how quickly can he get there?"

She was having dinner, and quite a good one, in the front part of the living-room in Jessore's dak bungalow. This room can be divided into two by means of a curtain drawn across, and you can listen, in fact you are obliged to listen, if there is another party ensconced behind, either to the furtive love-whispers of those who should not be there, or the frank abuse of each other of the bona fide couple suffering from intense heat and long years of matrimony.

Leonie spoke over her shoulder in the direction of the bedroom, where the bearer was arranging the mosquito net, her toilet things, and her new-bought dainty night attire.

It you are the right type or caste everything always goes smoothly for you in India; if you are not it most emphatically does not; so she had not given a thought to the extraordinary ease with which her wishes seemed to be carried out, in fact forestalled.

"It is the same serang who took the mem-sahib when she went on the shikar and killed the man-eating tiger. The two coolies to carry the mem-sahib's luggage have been hired, and the boat will be moored to-morrow night!"

"To-morrow night," said Leonie, the light from the adjoining room throwing up her white face against the shadows of the quickly falling night. "But it took us two nights to get there last time."

"We are going a shorter way, mem-sahib. The launch will be moored in a big creek on the front of the island at which the mem-sahib landed last time. A small boat will take us through the very narrow creek, which encircles the island, to the other side near which the temple stands. There will not be much walking for the mem-sahib, she can proceed immediately to the temple in time to see the sunrise, or pass the night in a suapattah——"

"Oh! never that!" said Leonie most decidedly, thinking of her last experience.

"But this hut is clean, mem-sahib!"

Leonie turned right round in her chair.

"How do you know that the last hut was not?"

"All huts are dirty, mem-sahib."

There was not a sign of confusion on the calm well-bred face, and he stood like a statue as Leonie, unconsciously striving for light in the darkness, continued her questioning.

"How did you know I wanted to go to the same place—to the temple, I mean?"

"I did not know, the mem-sahib told the chauffeur!"

At the last word Leonie lifted her head, and her eyes rested intently upon the handsome face in the doorway between the two rooms.

"No! I did not!"

"The great heat of the day doubtless caused the mem-sahib to forget the order she gave to her servant."

Never argue with a native of India, because educated or not he will invariably, and with the utmost courtesy, make you feel at the end of the argument that, if not a born, you are at least an excellent temporary liar.

"Did your parents have you taught your remarkable English?"

"The mem-sahib is too kind to inquire."

In India you do not show curiosity about your servants' private affairs or their families, it is not expected, it is not understood; and at the silence which followed the answer Leonie, feeling herself rebuked, rose from the table, and walked out on to the verandah to hide the colour which swept her face from chin to brow.

In the middle of the night, when suddenly and unaccountably aroused from a restless doze, she spoke sharply as her eyes rested on a white figure prone upon the floor in the reflected light of the moon.

"Bearer!"

Her voice was indignant, and the man with one movement rose to his feet and salaamed.

"What do you mean by sleeping in my room?"

Dear heaven, how he loved her as she sat like an image of wrath behind the mosquito net with the sheet pulled up to her neck.

"There are three doors to the mem-sahib's bedroom, and as the blinds fit badly, except for the presence of her servant, there is nothing to prevent a pariah dog, a jackal, or a thief from entering."

"Please leave my room and sleep somewhere else. I do not like it, and I am quite safe."

Leonie, feeling acutely the want of dignity in her bunched-up attitude, did not know what to say when the man refused suavely, but point-blank, to leave her.

"I regret that I cannot obey, as the mem-sahib is in my care, and I am responsible for her safety; but until the day breaks I will keep watch at the foot of the bed where the mem-sahib's eyes cannot rest upon her servant!"

Oh! Leonie! Leonie! With that strange, angry, and unaccounted-for mark still upon your shoulder, if only you knew what a fuss you were making over nothing.

But she said thank you quite nicely when chotar hazri was placed beside her bed in the early morning, to the refreshing sound of water being heaved into the tin bath in the dressing-room.



CHAPTER XLIV

"If thou faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."—The Bible.

Jan Cuxson was walking round and round the ruined chamber, pausing at the doors as he passed them to look out at the seemingly never-ending jungle; he would have reminded any onlooker of some caged beast as he went monotonously round and round.

He was rather a desperate sight, too, with harassed eyes in a gaunt face, and his open shirt exposing a somewhat emaciated chest; not that he had been starved, far from it; but eat you ever so heartily, fill your interior with all the fatty substances, real or artificial, in the world, worry will push in your cheek and temple, draw canals of woe from your nose to your mouth, and force your cheek-bone, nose, and ribs into high relief.

Of course he ought to have had a many days' growth of beard all over the face; but, owing to one particular fad, he had not; and thank goodness! for it would have been simply appalling to have had to end the book with the hero looking like a woolly hearthrug.

His fad which saves the situation was that when travelling either for hours or for days his safety razor invariably travelled in his pocket; and the old priest had smiled when he caught him in the act of lathering his face, less successfully, it is true, than more, with a finger tip smeared in ghee, which is clarified fat; and had come back later with a handful of stuff which looked for all the world and felt almost as sticky as French almond rock, a certain vegetable root, slightly acid of smell, which lathers beautifully in hot or cold water, and which, in some districts, the natives use as soap.

He was simply in an agony of mind.

He had stormed, and threatened, and pleaded in turn, and offered the whole of his kingdom in exchange for her safety—all of which had made about as much impression upon the priest as a few snowflakes would upon the Himalayas.

His one and only attempt at escape, which had taken place twenty-four hours before, had been a dire failure.

Roaming around the courtyard outside his chamber, which seemed curiously near, and yet cut off from the rest of the temple, he had heard the tinkle of silver anklets, the sound of a native woman's high-pitched laugh, and the bleating of a goat.

And the thought struck him that if a woman had come to seek counsel of the priest she must have come through the jungle by some safe road known to the native, and she would have to go back by the same road; and if he could only find the way into the temple itself, and watch her from the shadows, what would be easier than to follow her and reach Leonie in time to save her from the disaster and death threatening her.

Although the thought of the death straight to which Leonie was coming, blindfolded by the curse upon her, made his blood run cold and turned his heart to stone at the knowledge of his own impotence, the picture of what might happen to her at the hands of the native crazed with religion and love well-nigh drove him frantic.

He was absolutely at the priest's mercy.

A stronger will than his own allowed him to wander so far and no farther; indeed, he had been powerless even to reach the block of stones from behind which the priest appeared when upon visiting bent, and around which he disappeared when he went to worship before his god.

"I am like a damned hen with a chalk circle drawn round it!" Cuxson had exclaimed when he tried over and over again to pass the invisible line; and he cursed aloud as he felt the deep sleep creeping upon him at various hours of the day and night, and from which there was no escape, try as he would to keep awake.

But upon the day when he heard the tinkle of silver anklets and the bleating of the goat, something, just as curiously incomprehensible, had urged him to walk to the ruined mass of stones which hid the priest's entrance and exit; and he had walked across the sun-stricken court without let or hindrance, or covering to his head, and had found on the other side a low doorway almost choked with jungle growth.

He had not paused to think nor plan; he had merely bent his tall figure and crept through and down the narrow, decaying passage, along which, dotted irregularly here and there, shone little lights in tiny earthenware saucers. He had paused once or twice, sickened by the sight of offerings of which a description is not necessary, and shivered, strong man though he was, when he had met the eyes of gods leering, or glaring at him from little hewn-out shrines in the crumbling masonry.

His feet made no sound, for the narrow way was choked with the dust of ages, and he gave no thought to what might lurk in the shadows in the shape of beast or reptile, so intent was he on reaching the place which held the woman, and which had seemed near when she had laughed, and unaccountably far away as he stole stealthily forward.

The passage twisted at every few yards, and once he had found himself at a dead end in what he thought must be the priest's living room, as far as he could make out by the dim light coming through a tiny aperture high up in the wall. He had dimly seen a bed of leaves, a single covering, and an earthenware platter and jug, before he turned quickly and retreated when something hissed softly and rustled among the leaves.

Having got back into the passage and made some considerable headway, he was almost choked, when on turning a corner he had been enveloped in a sickly sweet smell of many flowers, allied to some sickening odour to which he could give no name; and then he had stopped dead, and flattened himself against the wall as he realised that he had come out by the side of the altar into the temple itself.

Arranged neatly on each side of the doorway were glittering brass vessels, brass trays, and little piles of tiny earthenware saucers; to his left was tethered a black kid, which lay contentedly upon a heap of dying flowers; near it was what appeared to be a miniature guillotine stained almost black; and above his head, in front of him and hanging from a hook in a huge, upstanding block of granite, glittered, a short, needle-pointed knife.

One knife?

Nay! two, three, a dozen, scores, thousands, thousands of glittering knives whirled around his head; and hundreds of goats grinned from corners and capered about his feet, and millions of evil eyes winked at him from the dusky shadows; and voices rose in choirs, male and female voices, whispering, laughing, singing. Louder, still louder, rising like some all-conquering flood, while silver anklets clashed until the brain was nigh to splitting with the din.

He must see, he must see, and watch the women who laughed shrilly and often; he must see the front of that great block of stone which barred his way to Leonie. Yes! Of course that was it, just that one great block of stone which kept him from his love.

Jan Cuxson made a mighty effort to move his heathen foot over the inch of threshold which separated him from the holy place. His breath came in gasps, and the veins stood out in knots upon his forehead as he pushed with both hands at the empty air; he fought like a mad dog to overcome that mighty force arrayed against him which neither advanced nor retreated, but was just there.

Then as something out of the void struck him cruelly between the eyes he gave a mighty shout which made no sound at all, and fell with a crash, scattering the brass vessels and tiny earthenware saucers to the four corners of the space around the altar.

Sunstroke?—well, hardly.

Because the next morning, when he awoke with the hide thongs fastening him by the wrist and the waist to the ring in the wall, he felt fit, and fresh, and extremely wide awake.

Perhaps it was that the blow, or whatever had struck Jan Cuxson down on the threshold of the temple, had served to sharpen his wits; anyway, for some unknown reason, words uttered by the priest on the first day of his imprisonment began to repeat themselves over and over again in his brain, as he sat uncomfortably with his back to the wall and his eyes fixed with a certain crafty understanding upon a piece of rusty metal half hidden under a fallen brick.

Wherefore he wheedled and cajoled when the priest came to visit him until the thongs were unfastened and his somewhat prescribed liberty restored.

"Only until the shadows fall, sahib," the old man said as he gathered the hide thongs in his hands. "Tonight is the night of the full moon and the white woman is even now approaching."

"Leonie—-I mean the mem-sahib—is in the jungle—with whom?"

"Verily, sahib, with the man who loves her!"

"Oh, my God!" said Cuxson slowly. "How do you know?"

"We need no wires or poles to carry us news, sahib! We have a surer way, aye, and a quicker one. Struggle not to-night, sahib, when I tie you to the ring in the wall. Bound you must be, for the Black One has spoken; and it is her pleasure that I shall lift my will from you, even as I did by mischance yesterday. India has suffered through this white woman; my people have been tormented by her, and Kali, the Black One, has commanded that the sufferings of the land shall be wiped out in the white woman's blood, and the torments of the people in your torments."

It has been said that Jan Cuxson was plodding to a degree akin to slowness.

He was! But you may be sure that if an idea came to him even at the eleventh hour it would be a good idea and would be developed until it reached an advanced stage of perfection.

Some time after the priest had departed he drew the piece of metal, which proved to be the broken blade of a knife, from under the fallen stone, slipped it into his pocket, and was as well content as his harassed mind and overwrought imagination would allow him to be.



CHAPTER XLV

"Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, thou art fair!"—S. of Solomon.

"Yea! he is altogether lovely."—S. of Solomon.

With her bearer's hand to balance her, Leonie stepped off the gangway into the rocking, canoe-shaped boat, made in the dim past by digging out the interior of some tree trunk, and in the bows of which were huddled the coolies with her luggage.

Two bronze-hued rowers, nude save for the loin cloth, paddled the boat round the bends of the narrow creek with a dexterity due to habit; and then by chance or misfortune wedged her firmly into a glutinous mud-bank from out of which it took the five men two hours and every ounce of their united strength to push her.

It is not wise to wade waist or knee deep in a Sunderbunds creek, and clear a boat with a yo-heave-ho, for fear of some festive mugger, which means alligator, lurking in the mud.

She had therefore no option but to pass the night well above the jungle perils in the suapattah hut, like a cockatoo screeching defiance at a cat from the safety of its perch; and to which safety you climb almost flat on your face by means of a rocking, slender bamboo ladder, and with about as much grace as a monkey manipulating a stick.

There was a sharp tussle of wills after the dinner of which Leonie partook on the small platform which comes between the top of the ladder and the low door of the hut.

Having arranged her bedding and mosquito curtains as best he could, and seen to it that one of the low caste coolies negotiated the ladder with a gourd of water upon his head and placed it upon the floor in the mem-sahib's bed-chamber, her bearer, when Leonie retired for the night, drew up the ladder and curled himself up in a corner.

Almost stifled by the heat of the interior she came out again in search of fresh air, and stared in amazement at the white figure as he sprang to his feet perilously near the edge of the platform.

No! nothing would move him from his post during the night, nothing.

"But I am perfectly safe up here," remonstrated Leonie, "when you have gone to the other hut I can quite easily pull the ladder up!"

"Even so, mem-sahib," quietly replied the man, "but the mem-sahib is not accustomed to these heights; there are no railings to the platform, and one false step would send her crashing to the ground."

"But I am going to bed," Leonie persisted. "Besides, if I did move I can see quite plainly, it's almost full moon!"

There was a barely perceptible pause and then;

"Yes, mem-sahib, it is the full moon!"

Leonie, stricken dumb in the belief that the story of her mental plight had reached even to the bazaar, turned back and re-entered her so-called bedroom, drawing a purdah made of golaputtah leaves across the door, and leaving her bearer to his own devices and thoughts.

Which were utterly of her as he divested himself of his outer raiment, and nude save for the loin cloth, sat like a bronze statue in the overpowering heat of the night; and even as "the eagle flying forth beats down his wings upon the earth," his thoughts beat down so forcibly upon her mind that at midnight she arose in her sleep and lifting the purdah walked out on to the platform.

She walked straight forward, too far from the man for him to pull her back; and in too deep a trance for him to have stopped her with safety to her brain. His face was that of one tortured as he rose to his feet and threw out his hands; and the sweat came out in great beads upon his forehead under the supreme effort of will, which pulled her up within an inch of certain death.

For one long moment she stood with arms upstretched to the moon shining in all its glory, then swung round and crossed to where he stood against the hut.

"Yes?" she said gently. "You called me!"

The man drew his breath quickly as he looked at her, and forgot his gods in his love, and his passions in the innate nobility of his soul.

She looked for all the world like a mere schoolgirl in her over-long, kimono-shaped, diaphanous night garment, with her hair hanging in two great plaits, and her eyes and mouth lit by the suspicion of a smile.

"Sit down!" he said gently, and she sank to the ground as easily and with all the graceful suppleness of a native woman.

"Yes!" she repeated. "You called me! What is it you desire?"

She made a little gesture inviting him to sit beside her, and he sank to the ground, lying prone at her knees with his chin in his hands, staring straight into the green eyes which shone strangely, and looked at him unblinkingly.

"Tell me what you think of me," he said, speaking in the merest whisper out of the depth of his love. "Tell me, and I will tell you what I think of you—thou lotus bud," he finished desperately in his own tongue.

Leonie answered in the sweetest, purest Hindustani, using the beautiful strange metaphors of India to describe the human body.

"Thou art," she said. "Thou art—how can I tell thee I——"

She stopped, laughing down at him as she put both hands out on a level with her chin, palm upwards, towards him, in a little supplicating gesture.

"Tell me!"

"Behold," she said softly as she passed the tips of her fingers from his forehead to his chin. "Behold is thy face softly rounded like the egg of a bird, and thy brow is even as a tautened bow——"

A great tremor shook the man at the touch of her hand, but he made no movement as he broke across her words.

"And thy face so fair, so dear, is even like the pan leaf, and thy dark brows like the neem leaf disturbed by the wind, when thou art displeased with him who so loveth thee. Yet when thou art not angry, are thy drooping lids like the water-lily in their sweet repose. Thy ears, those can I not see—ah!"

Leonie laughed softly as the very tips of her fingers passed down the side of his face.

"And thine are like vultures with drooping head, and thy nose——"

"Thine," he interrupted, twisting his head to evade the exquisite agony of her touch, "is like a sesame flower, and thy nostrils even unto the seed of the barbarti, and thy lips—oh! thy lips are the bandihuli flower."

He raised his face with agony in his eyes, closing them as she lightly touched his mouth.

"Thy mouth is even as the bimba fruit, which is warm and soft, and thy chin is like a mango stone, and thy neck like unto a conch shell which I encircle with both hands."

She spanned his neck with the outspread thumbs and little fingers of both hands, and laughed as he pulled them apart and buried his face in his arms.

"Dost fear?" she said. "Dost fear that I shall strangle thee? Dost fear?" she repeated with a certain sharp note in the voice which caused the man to look up quickly and straight into her eyes, upon which she laughed quietly.

"Tell me," he insisted gently, "tell me what thou thinkest of me!"

"Ah!" she whispered, "thy shoulders are like the head of an elephant and thy long arms are as the trunk, and the strength of thy breast is even as that of a fastened door—which love perchance may open," the heavy lids half-closed over her eyes as she slowly drew the finger-tips of both hands down towards the slim waist, and the man's teeth drew blood from his under lip.

"Thy middle is like a lion's, so slender is it, and——"

He stopped her fiercely as he twisted on to his right elbow and seized both her hands in his left.

"And the suppleness of thy arms, and the softness of thy limbs are like the young plaintain tree, and thy fingers are the buds of the champaka flower." He spoke rapidly, crushing her hands cruelly. "The bone of thy knee showing whitely through thy garment is shaped even as the shell of a crab, and the whiteness of the bone from thy knee to thy slender ankle is like a full-roed fish——"

"And thy feet and thy hands, O Lord, are as the young leaves of plants!"

To which he replied through the teeth that were closed.

"And thine so small, so dear, are as lotus buds—lotus buds swaying at dawn in the wind of love."

She smiled divinely as she stretched one perfect bare foot from under her garment, and bent her head to catch the words as he passionately whispered the Vega hymn.

"Want thou the body of me, the feet; want thou the eyes; want the thighs; let the eyes, the hair of thee, desiring me, dry up in love.

"I make thee cling to my arm, cling to my heart; that thou mayest be in my power, come unto my intent.

"They——"

He stopped, convulsed with passion, and bending kissed her feet.

"Ah! thy hands, thy feet, are like lotus buds—lotus buds which I love, even if they be drenched in blood."

He leapt to his feet and caught Leonie's wrist in the vice of his hand as she sprang upright in one movement, laughing as she pointed at his mouth.

"Blood," she whispered, "blood—it is warm—it drops slowly—slowly——"

She ran her fingers across his mouth, and shook with hideous silent laughter as she showed him the tips stained red.

"Come," she said, "come—she is calling—calling——" and she struck at the hand which gripped her shoulder, and tried to shake herself free.

"Come!" said the man, looking straight into her eyes, "come with me."

She slid her hand into his, and followed him docilely as he lifted the reed purdah and entered her bedroom.

"Lie down!"

He lifted the netting and pointed to the bed.

As he towered above her the scarlet mouth in the uplifted face was on a level with his shoulder, as she smiled distractingly and raised her hands palm upwards in a little supplicating gesture.

"My Lord!" she whispered. "My Lord!"

The temptations of all the ages, and the overpowering passion of his own glowing East rose about him like a flood; he shook from head to foot as she laid herself down and drawing the sheet about her whispered again, "My Lord!"

They were alone in the jungle, and his will was hers; she was as a bit of wax upon which he might imprint his seal; there was no one to say him nay if he should draw her unto his intent.

And he loved her.

Yes! he loved her, and because of the overpowering strength of this love he knelt beside her and placed his fingers upon her temples.

"Sleep, beloved," he whispered, "sleep—the women that are of pure odour—all of them—we—make—sleep."

And Leonie slept peacefully and undisturbed until the dawn, because Madhu Krishnaghar, with his face buried in his arms, who lay across the threshold of her bedroom, was one of the splendid type that India breeds—an Indian nobleman.



CHAPTER XLVI

"Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh."—The Bible.

One thing after another happened to prevent Leonie from continuing what remained of the journey during the cooler hours of sunrise.

One coolie strayed and was not retrieved until the other two men were hoarse from shouting, then another ran something into his foot, which was only extracted after a mighty fuss, and something akin to a major operation, skilfully performed with the bearer's knife and a few thorns plucked from the bush.

Last but not least, as they were on the point of starting, a snake about two yards long had blithely wriggled its shining length across their very path; and nothing short of hours of prayer and offerings to their gods would move the coolies along that path after such a sign of ill omen; no! rather than budge an inch they would have laid down in their tracks and died of snake-bite, or a marauding tiger; and Leonie was far too wise a traveller to lose sight of her luggage for one second—in India.

Although she had no idea why she was in such haste, she inwardly fretted at the hours lost, but passed them with outward patience in the shade of the jungle trees; eating what was brought her, and sleeping away the afternoon stretched on a rug; unconscious of the fact that her bearer sat behind her head, fanning her face gently, and with the lightest and deftest of fingers removing the various insects, long and short, fat and thin, smooth or horny, which seemed to have taken unlimited return tickets for the journey over her body.

They had been for some time on the way, the coolies trapesing behind to the tune of some monotonous chant; and the moon was beginning to fling handsful of silver out of her heavenly mint when Leonie, overcome by a most unromantic craving for tea, gave the order to halt.

"How much farther is it?" she asked, as she busied herself with a spirit lamp and a tin of evaporated milk.

Her bearer looked up at the moon.

"Another half-hour, mem-sahib, and we reach the outer walls of the temple—ah! allow me——"

Leonie had dropped a teaspoon and was bending to pick it up, but instead, straightening herself with the kind of snap an over-strung violin string gives when it breaks, took one step forward and fixed her eyes on her servant's face.

"Of course," she said, speaking half to herself, "of course—no wonder I thought I knew you—I saw you in London once—and it was you I saw on the station—and your voice——" she clasped her hands together and took a step quickly backwards—"you were the guide in the tiger hunt, you—you have been following me—you are dogging me—hunting me down—why—tell me why? What harm have I done you?—tell me?"

Her eyes, which were shining strangely in the quickly falling night, swept the man before her from head to foot, and she instinctively threw out her hands and took another step backwards as she realised at last his extraordinary beauty.

"Why is the mem-sahib afraid? What has her servant done to cause trouble to her soul? He meant but to lighten her load, and make smooth her path."

Leonie, with the desire common among women to hide the tell-tale expression of their faces by the movement of their hands, knelt and began fiddling among the tea things.

"Sit down," she said abruptly, pointing to-the ground on the other side of the earthy tea-table, "and tell me everything."

"Nay, mem-sahib! A humble native may not sit in the presence of a white woman."

Leonie lifted her head.

"Sit down," she said simply.

And there in the heart of the jungle, by the side of the fire that had been lighted to scare off any animal, they sat, those two splendid specimens of two splendid races divided by custom and colour, while he told her the strange story of the night on which they had both been dedicated to the Goddess of Destruction, and the happenings thereafter.

"Do you mean to tell me that you willed me to come to you in the museum that day in London?"

He looked straight into her perplexed eyes as he answered slowly:

"I felt that if I could draw you through the ebb and flow and the floods of London traffic, I could do as I would with you on the plains of India. I did not know you—then!"

"And the priest has made me come to the temple—against my will?"

"Even so."

"And what is to happen to me there to-night?"

"A danger threatens you, beautiful white woman, a great danger threatens you from which I alone can save you, yea! and will in spite of all the gods!"

"You will save me—you—and why?"

"Because I love you!"

The words were out, and Leonie, springing to her feet, drew back as the man rose and stood motionless in the dancing shadows thrown by the fire.

"What do you mean? Oh, how dare you——"

"How dare I—dare I—tell you that I love you and want you for wife? Why should I not love you from your beautiful head to your perfect feet? Why should you not be my wife? Because I am what you call black? because of this colouring of my skin which, outside my own land, damns me to eternity, and bars me from all that I desire? Nay, you shall listen, and you shall answer! You will, will you not?"

The voice had dropped from the pitch of fierce denunciation to the sound as of a deep river flowing in pleasant places, and Leonie nodded mutely, succumbing, as is the way of woman, to the entrancing pastime of playing with fire.

She closed her eyes and clasped her hands tightly together when the man, stepping across the barriers of interracial convention, came and stood just behind her shoulder without touching her withal, and spoke in his own tongue.

"Ah, woman, I would call thee wife. Behold, I have much to offer: a great name, vast wealth, palaces, broad lands, jewels, elephants, villages; the esteem of my people, the love of my father and of my mother, of whom I am the only son. All of which is nothing, nothing compared with my love for thee. A love as virgin as the snow upon the Everlasting Hills, swifter than Mother Ganges, deeper than the Indian Ocean, and higher than the vault of heaven. What matter custom, or law, or regulation, or colour, when such a love as mine is offered? Thou as my wife, thou, and thy children my only children. Am I not beautiful? even as beautiful a male as thou art a female? Would not the days and the nights, the months and the years be as heaven—together? Love me—nay! say but that I may call thee wife. Give me thy promise and I will save thee!"

"Save me?—from what?"

Leonie turned and faced this splendid lover, shivering slightly as a low moaning wind rustled the leaves of the trees and stirred the undergrowth.

"Even from death!"

"Death?" she said quietly, looking straight into the man's eyes. "Death—for me? Why I thought I was being willed to the temple to make sacrifice to your god?"

"To-night thou must surely die unless I save thee."

"Oh! you are mistaken," came the quick, decisive reply. "Why, if I was murdered, the whole Empire would be up in arms."

"The British Raj would not know," was the quiet answer.

"Oh! but——"

"You have not seen the Fort of Agra, the sad, dead palace. There, in the dungeons, is a beam stretched across the hidden wells and marked with the fret of a rope. Many a beautiful woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or wrists, and her body dropped through the well into the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her master and her executioner."

"Oh!—oh! don't——"

"Twice," continued the quiet voice relentlessly, "the sacrifice has been averted, but now the hour has come. Thou art here alone, none knowing, and I—I alone can save thee. And will not Kali, our mother, raise her hands in blessing upon us united, even as we were united when babes, and being appeased, lift the curse from off the land. She is soft and gentle, treading lightly upon life's stony paths, Uma so sweet, Parvati, daughter of the eternal snows. Oh! woman, say that thou wilt be my wife, for behold, are we not marked with the same mark which——"

"Mark? What mark?" Leonie questioned abruptly, looking back over her shoulder, her mouth perilously near to his as he bent his head slightly towards her; and there fell a little silence in which the thudding of his heart could be felt against the silk thread of her jersey.

"Between thy breasts, thou white dove, hast thou no mark?"

Leonie tried to speak, and failing, nodded her russet head.

"Even so, it is the mark of Kali which the priest cut upon thee and me, uniting us all those moons ago in the Mother."

She turned completely round and faced the man with a little look of wonder in her eyes.

"I have so often wondered about the—the little mark," she said. "But you see—how could I marry you—I could not, do not—love you!"

"Love," he said quietly. "Love! Thou wilt love me, aye! thou wilt love me in thy waking hours, even as thou wouldst have loved me in thy sleep if—if the gods had not intervened."

"You—have—been with me—in—my—sleep?" she whispered.

"When thou didst walk in thy sleep!"

CHAPTER XLVII

"For jealousy is the rage of a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance."—The Bible.

Suddenly she was struck with the full horror of those lost nights in which the man beside her had been her companion. She stretched out her hands and turned them over this way and that, scrutinising them with horrified eyes. She touched her mouth with her finger-tips and drew them with a shudder down her neck, and her breast, and her waist, as she looked upon the beauty of the man before her with his passionate mouth and gleaming eyes.

"You—you have been with me when I have walked, unconscious in my sleep; you have——"

He interrupted her hastily, divining her thoughts.

"Yea!" he said, "I have been with thee when, under the influence of my god, thou hast walked in thy sleep. I have watched over thee and helped thy cut and bleeding feet over the roughness of the roads, as I would help them over the perilous road of life. I have not touched thy hand save in support; I have not touched the glory of thy mouth with my mouth, because thou couldst not give me thy consent so to do!

"Dost think it has been a child's task to keep my hands and my kisses from thee? Behold, I had but to make a sign, and thou, in thy unconsciousness, would have come unto my intent! Oh, thou bud of innocent fragrance; thou fruit ready to the plucking of loving hands! Aye, thou wert, thou art in my power; and even have I seen thee in——"

"Ah!" said Leonie sharply as her hand slid to her shoulder and the words came through her closed teeth—"You lie!"

"Lie!"

"Yes, lie! You have not touched me you say; neither have you kissed me, but you, and only you, can tell me what the mark is on my shoulder—a mark I shall carry to my grave."

The man threw back his turbaned head and was about to make reply, when, with those shrill cries which betray great fear, a troop of monkeys passed them, chattering as they ran swiftly on all fours, or swung even more swiftly from tree to tree; and the native looked after them, and up to the sky, and over his shoulder along the narrow path by which they had come, showing black and white in the alternate lights and shadowings of the moon.

"Answer me!" said Leonie more sharply than she knew, and with a woman's superb indifference to any event or signs of approaching event outside her own love orbit.

"Nay, answer thou me!" replied the man who, expert in the knowledge of jungle signs, yet put aside all thought save of his love for the woman. "Tell me that thou wilt be my wife and the mother of my sons, thou beautiful woman! Tell me that thou wilt come unto me this night, wedded to me, by yon old priest; and that, within the arms of Uma so sweet, of Parvati who steppeth so lightly, I may set my seal upon thee.

"Lifting from thee, as I and the priest only may lift, that which thou callest the curse from about thee, bringing thee to happiness in the shadow of the temple."

But something had happened to Leonie, bringing her to a pitch of excitement foreign to her in her waking hours. She looked swiftly to right and left, and over her shoulder, and up the narrow path they must go to the temple; and up to the sky she could see faintly through the trees, and into the eyes of the man watching her intently. Then she clasped her hands tightly and moved close to him, her face as white as death.

"And the sahib, the white man, where is he?"

The native of India weaves and fashions the cloth of his cloak of love out of many colours. Gorgeous colours, blinding, dazzling, in which predominate the scarlet of passion and the emerald of the supreme male's jealousy. And all, from the sweeper to the highest of birth and caste, wear this wondrous garment in India, though not one out of the teeming millions fashions his cloak upon the pattern of his neighbour's.

Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of princes, with eyes dimmed by the brilliance of his own particular garment, failed to perceive that Leonie, too, was wrapped in a love mantle.

The occidental mantle, made of honest homespun, uniform in colour, and with a wide hem to allow for shrinkage; but guaranteed to stand all weathers and to last a lifetime.

He might have been flicking a fly from his sleeve, so indifferent was his answer in his blindness.

"The white man? He is bound to the temple walls, awaiting the woman he allows to walk unveiled and alone throughout India."

"Ah!" said Leonie, with that little hush in her voice which is heard in the mother's when she first sees her new-born babe. "I am sorry," she continued quietly, "so sorry I have not been honest with you. I cannot marry you because——"

She stopped and turned as with a sound like the tearing of silk a flock of birds suddenly flew from the tree tops and whirled away into the night.

"Because? Because, woman?"

For a moment Leonie unconsciously watched the flight of the birds, then swung round, arms stretched wide, eyes shining, and her face aglow.

"Because I love the white man in the temple who is tied to the wall, that is why!"

Her voice rang clear and true under the sky, and she stepped back quickly and threw out her hands as the man spoke. For the banked-down fires of his passion and his love, and the hurt to his race, and his own sudden-born agony flared in one half-second into a mighty, awful conflagration. The flame of his words licked at her feet and the hem of her garments, blazed across her hands with which she hid her face, and swept right over her from head to heels, and yet he did not touch her nor raise his voice one half tone.

"Thou woman! Then shall no man have thee, for I will drive my dagger through the white man's heart before thine eyes, and watch thee, thou beautiful thing, wed him in the shadow of death."

And Leonie, catching the look in his eyes and the set of the mouth, knew that he meant what he said; and she laid her hand on his arm, so that his agony was increased a thousandfold as he looked down upon her whom he had lost.

"You would not, could not do that?" she whispered.

"Could not kill the feringhee?" and the hate in the old mutiny word was terrible to hear. "What else should I do to him who has stolen the sun from my sky, the fragrance from my rose?"

The man seized her by the wrist, and, pulling her to him, bent down, whispering soft, passionate words.

"Shall I tell thee, love flower, what love is? It is the gold of noon, and the silver of night, the might of the lion, and the soft cooing of the gentle dove. As the slender vine around the straight palm, so will my love twine around thy heart. Yea, and even as the banyan tree sends out branches to draw dew from the rounded breast of earth, my love shall yearn towards thee. Day and her lover, Night, with the Dawn and the Sunset their children; the stag and the gentle doe, with their fierce horned offspring, and their offspring as round and smooth even as thy throat. So will our union be, for behold, my love for thee is so surpassing that our sons could but be of the most perfect manhood, and our daughter, why, she will be after thine own fashioning."

The man's eyes shone as he felt the trembling of the girl, and he pressed her, tempting her, revelling after the strange way of the East in the agony of the defeat his victory would bring him.

"And to save the life of the white man, thou opening bud of the passion flower, wilt thou not come unto such a love as mine; to the shadowed corners of my palaces, to the fragrance of my courts, wilt thou not?"

Then a strange thing happened, unheeded by the two sorely tormented souls.

A great form crashed across the path behind them, followed by the bounding passage of a herd of deer; and from all around came the sounds of animals fleeing in panic, as Leonie lifted her face to the man's with a desperate resolve in her stricken eyes.

And the man, reading the answer, bowed his head to her stone cold hands and crushed them to his heart.

"Thou wilt marry me—to-night?"

"For the sake of the man I love," came the steady answer; "to save his life I will be—your—your wife. No, wait! On these conditions. That he is set free and shown a way to safety—that I follow him in secret—and see that he is safe—and that you tell him that I am dead. Swear that to me before your gods and I will keep my promise; swear that you will tell him that I am dead."

And Madhu, the son of princes, put both hands to his forehead and bowed before the woman; then stood erect, with hands upraised to heaven, silent, wrestling with temptation; and having won, he spoke, his face transfigured, his eyes half closed in agony.

"Thou star of heaven! Thou highest point of the Everlasting Hills, behold hast thy great love triumphed. I love thee, but my heart could hold no wife who loved another as thou hast shown thou lovest this man. I——"

But, alas! Leonie, swept off her balance in her great relief, broke across his words.

"Let us hasten quickly, quickly. You will tell the priest; you will help me to set him—the man I love—free. Oh, come quickly, quickly!"

In her callous but uncalculated desire to use this man as a lever wherewith to heave aside the mountain of trouble which threatened to overwhelm Jan Cuxson; and, with the inexplicable cruelty of the woman who loves, and will blissfully put a whole community to torture as long as her beloved is saved a single hurt, she asked the one impossible thing.

He moved so quickly, fiercely, closely to her that she backed until she stood in a patch of moonlight which shone upon her face.

Higher she raised her face, and still higher, as she looked back straight into the eyes intent on hers.

And Madhu Krishnaghar laughed savagely as he looked down upon her.

"Go!" he commanded; "go up the path to the temple gate to meet thy fate. The Mother claims thee, and may thy blood and the blood of the white man who has stolen thee from me flow upon her altar before she shakes the earth in the fury of her displeasure."

Tortured, his soul sought relief in the fanaticism of his religion which flared in his eyes; consumed with love, he called her back as she turned to do the bidding of a stronger will than her own.

"Come!"

She stopped and turned, gave a vacant little laugh, and crept into his arms when he held them out, and closed them about her without touching her.

"Ah!" he whispered, "now that thou comest to me unknowingly I will have none of thee. I love thee, love thee, love thee! Go to thy death that my task may be well finished, and that everlasting torment may be fastened upon the soul of him who stole thee from me! Go, beloved of my soul, rose of the morning, delight of my heart! Ah, my love, my love, go to thy death——!"

And he opened wide his arms and pointed up the path, and Leonie went where he pointed; and never once looked back at the man standing with his arms stretched out towards her, whilst monkeys chattered, and parrots screamed, and the jungle teemed with flying, frightened shapes.



CHAPTER XLVIII

"A whirlpool of uncertainty, a prison of punishment, a basket of illusion, the open throat of hell."—The Spring Sataka.

A brick and some plaster clattered about Jan Cuxson's feet as he crossed the temple chamber and stood looking out at the jungle, and the animals of all sizes and shapes which were hurtling through the undergrowth. For a minute he stood twirling the rusty knife blade between his fingers, then hid it carefully behind a block of broken masonry.

"Better so," he muttered, "not much good as a weapon of defence, but better than nothing; might put the old man on the track if he happened to find it on me when he comes to tie me up. My God! to think of it; I, strong and healthy and sane, at the mercy of that old priest, actually under his will—hypnotised, forced to do exactly what he tells me. Please heavens the ghee will hold the plaster together round the ring, and oh! I can't stand much more of this suspense."

He had come to the end of his endurance.

Day had followed night, and night had followed day monotonously, without a change in the heartbreaking dreariness of their round.

During the day he had watched the jungle over the outer wall for hours, rewarded by an occasional glimpse of deer; once by a striped yellow shade which had slunk between the trees, causing him to yearn for his rifle; at night he had lain gazing at the stars, comfortable enough upon a thick bed of leaves, untroubled by the mosquito which, as he had learned, does not thrive in the Sunderbunds Jungle; and day and night over the wall, or up at the stars, he strove to look into the future and found a dreary blank.

But upon this night he turned with a smile and a question on his lips when the priest suddenly emerged from behind the heap of stones and hurried across the flags towards him.

"Haste, sahib! The Mother is infuriated at the long waiting, and I go to make sacrifice to appease her. Haste, for it is not good for man if she stamps with both her holy feet. Come, and struggle not! Nay, look not at me in such fashion lest I lay the stress of my will upon you."

He looked so frail, that for an instant the white man had been tempted to fling himself upon him, and find deliverance for himself and his beloved by choking the wizened neck, or cracking the old pate against the stones.

But one is rather at a disadvantage when thoughts are liable to be read, and plans disclosed before they are even matured; and he walked submissively towards the ring in the wall, and seated himself abjectedly upon the floor, just as a handful of plaster inserted itself between his neck and the open collar of his shirt, and the back of his head bumped the wall.

"Something like a slight——"

"Haste, sahib! I must away to placate Kali, the Goddess of Destruction. There is not long now to wait for the great sacrifice for which she has waited all these weary years; and then, and only then, shall the plague, and the pestilence, and the famine be ended, and the people of India return to their old-time happiness."

He never once removed his eyes from those of the man beneath him, and Cuxson sighed with relief, well content that the glaring eyes should not move beyond his face.

Having knotted the thongs tightly, the old man straightened himself, and smiled up at the silvery heavens in the ecstasy of his worship.

"Such sacrifice, O Mother, as thou hast longed for, and which has long been forbidden thee through the might of the white man who rules us. The temple is strewn with flowers, and the flames of hundreds of lights shine in thy fish-shaped eyes, thou daughter of the eternal snows." He looked down suddenly to Cuxson, and bending, whispered in his ear. "The white woman approaches, O feringhee, even she who has caused this land to travail in agony all these years. And you shall see her, she shall come to you and know you not, and you shall hear her voice upraised in worship as she lies upon the altar at her Mother's feet while you are bound to the ring in the wall. She has done well in worship, even in sacrifice, but it is in her rich warm blood that Kali the Terrible would lave her hands. Struggle not, for behold, although I have lifted my will from you that you should be tormented even as my race has been tormented by a woman of your land, yet will the ring and the hide hold you fast."

Like some huge bird of prey he ran swiftly back across the flags and disappeared behind the mass of stones, and Cuxson, not daring to move for fear of tightening the thongs, sat almost numb with anxiety as he wondered if his luck would hold at the crucial moment.

Except for the crash of the frightened animals as they fought their way through the undergrowth, there was no sound whatever in the place, but as the moon took her seat above the exact centre of where once had been the temple roof, he moved, and leant forward as far as the two feet of raw hide would allow him, and from between his clenched teeth there came one word:

"Hell!"

For the silence had been suddenly broken by a girl's sharp, hysterical laugh, and though the sound was but a travesty, yet it was surely Leonie's laugh.

Twisting his arms in the space the two feet of raw hide allowed him, the slow, sure, desperate man with a mute appeal to his God, sought and caught the iron ring in his hands.

And in the jungle clearing where the fire smouldered dimly, and the coolies, flat on their faces from abject terror, refused to move, Madhu Krishnaghar sat, garbed as a servant, his brain in a whirl of religion and hate, and his heart filled with love of the white girl he had sent to certain death.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet, and tearing his raiment from him flung it wide, and stood nude save for the loin cloth about the slender middle, and the turban which outlined his tortured face, looking like some lost bronze statue in the deserted places of the jungle. He raised his hands to heaven and prayed.

"O Mother, spare her! O great god, have pity upon her," and the suddenly risen wind took up his words and lifted them above the tree tops, wafting them perhaps—and why not—to the God of Infinite Love.

Yet even as he prayed Leonie crept up to the doorway of the temple, staring unblinkingly at the far end of the interior illuminated by the flickering wicks of the hundreds of little lights. She inhaled deeply, and half closed her glaring eyes as the overpowering sickly perfume of flowers, and some other indescribably sickening odour went to her head like cheap wine.

"Yes?" she said questioningly, although no sound had broken the intense stillness, and stood quite still with her head a little on one side, then dropped to one knee and commenced to unlace her high boots, the slap of the laces pulled through the holes cutting the silence like a knife.

With her hands clasped to her breast, and walking on the tips of her bare toes, she moved through the shadows towards the light, alone and obedient to a will that had no pity. Flowers were strewn thick in every direction, and over them she passed to her death, while the eyes of the priest never once left her face as he crouched in the opening which led to the secret places of the temple; he even smiled when she came to a standstill in front of the altar and swayed, slightly overcome by the heavy atmosphere even in her trance; and he nodded his head gently when she bent down and gathering handsful of the flowers, flung them up above her head and laughed the hysterical, crazy laugh which had reached the ears of the man she loved.

At her feet were thalees, brass plates laden with offerings of grain, of woven stuffs, of gold and silver; at her right hand a crimson silk sari lay upon a heap of fallen stones, and upon it was a garland of white flowers; and the slanting mother-o'-pearl eyes of the Goddess Kali looked down from out the black face at this girl who was to be sacrificed in atonement for the misery she had unwittingly brought upon the land of India and her people.

Leonie's hands moved mechanically to her hair, which she unfastened and shook out in all its glory; then they moved to the fastening of her jersey, and one by one her garments slipped to the floor, leaving her nude save for the covering of her hair.

Leaning down she lifted the sari, and with one quick movement twisted it about her waist and across her breast; slipped the garland of white flowers about her neck, and flinging back her hair raised her hands above her head and shouted.

She did not sing or cry aloud, she shouted with her mouth wide open, and her head thrust forward between her uplifted arms, a degrading picture of religious sensuality; and gathering up armsful of flowers from the floor, ran lightly over to the priest upon the tip of her bare toes which were stained a hideous red, and putting the palm of one hand against her forehead salaamed and said "Yes?" questioningly.

He laid no hand upon her, he made no sign and spoke no word, but she, as drugged by another's will as if she were under the bane of opium, followed him unhesitatingly into the secret places of the temple. Her bare feet made no sound on the dust of centuries; her eyes looked back unwaveringly into the eyes of the gods who leered down upon her; her hair caught around those others of which it is not seemly to write; and before them all she cast her flowers, and upon them all she laid her open palm.

And Jan Cuxson held his breath when she quietly sidled round the block of fallen masonry, and standing in a moonray glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. Hung with flowers, she looked like a bacchante, with one beautiful arm and shoulder showing bare through her mantle of tumbled hair.

And his eyes caught the shadow of the priest cast by the passage lights on to the floor as he stood hidden by the fallen stones, and he kept still, but he called to his beloved, striving by his will to break her chains, and truly at the sound of the loved voice the frozen horrors of her face seemed to break like ice-floes before the sun in spring.

"Leonie," he called gently, "Leonie, come to me, come here to me!"

Her eyelids suddenly closed upon the staring gold-flecked eyes; her mouth quivered in a little smile as she let fall the flowers about her bloodstained feet and ran swiftly across to Jan; kneeling she touched his face gently with her finger-tips, and stretched her hands across his shoulders towards the thongs which bound him to the ring in the wall.

Her hair fell upon him as she leaned towards him, and a memory of the day he had found her in Rockham Cove flashed across his mind; her mouth, her beautiful scarlet virgin mouth had almost touched his when the priest's power, closing down, jerked her back into the horrible travesty of her sweet, gentle self.

She sat back upon her heels and laughed, and said one word in Hindustani which is best translated as dog, although it means infinitely more and worse; and having uttered it she smote him across the mouth with the flat of her hand and rose to her feet.