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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leonie of the Jungle, by Joan Conquest
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Leonie of the Jungle
+
+Author: Joan Conquest
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2005 [EBook #15841]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
+
+BY
+
+JOAN CONQUEST
+
+
+
+
+Author of "Desert Love"
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1921, by
+
+THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+
+THE SPLENDID NATIVE OF INDIA,
+
+THE LIVING
+
+
+MADHU KRISHNAGHAR
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: The name "Madhu" appears throughout this book.
+The "u" in it can be correctly rendered only in Unicode, as
+u-macron--uppercase U+016A, lowercase U+016B.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE WEST
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE EAST
+
+
+
+"And never the twain shall meet."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE WEST
+
+
+
+
+LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  "To deliver thee from the strange woman!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Who found the kitten?"
+
+"Me," quavered the childish voice.
+
+Lady Susan Hetth tchcked with her tongue against her rather prominent
+teeth at the lamentable lapse in grammar, and looked crossly at Leonie,
+who immediately lifted up the quavering voice and wept.
+
+Sobs too big for such a little girl shook the slender body, whilst
+great tears dripped from the long lashes to the tip of the upturned
+nose, down the chin and on the knee of the famous specialist, against
+which she rested.
+
+"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"
+
+The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a
+shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable
+eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so
+young.
+
+"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"
+
+The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of
+steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater
+facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.
+
+"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the
+shop to buy a big doll and _forget_ all about it!"
+
+"Please may I have a book instead of----"
+
+"Leonie, that is very rude."
+
+"Please, Lady Hetth.  Go on, darling---what kind of book."
+
+"'Bout tigers an' snakes, oh! an' elephants.  Weal animals.  Dolls, you
+know"--she smiled as she confided the great secret--"aren't weal
+_babies_, they're just full of sawdust."
+
+He lifted the child on to his knee, frowning at the weight, and
+smoothed the tangled mass of curls away from the low forehead with a
+touch which caused her to make a sound 'twixt sob and sigh, and to lie
+back against the broad shoulder.
+
+It was a long and disjointed story, told in the inconsequent fashion of
+a child of seven unused to converse with her elders; and continually
+interrupted by the aunt, who, fretful and dying for her tea, jingled
+her distracting bracelets and chains, fidgeted with the Anglo-Indian
+odds-and-ends of her raiment, and disconcerted the child by the futile
+verbal proddings; which are as bad for the infant mind as the criminal
+attempts to force a baby to use its legs are to the infant body.
+
+"So! and you found the dear little kitten lying quite still in the
+nursery this morning?"
+
+"Yes!  Stwangled!"
+
+"Do pronounce your _r_'s, Leonie."
+
+The child shivered in the man's arms.
+
+"Who told you it was strangled?"
+
+"Auntie!"
+
+The man's hand closed for a moment on a heavy paper-weight as he looked
+across the room at the woman who was waggling her foot and knitting her
+scanty brows at the sound of the rending sobs.
+
+"Auntie was mistaken, darling.  Kitty was asleep, tired out with
+playing or running away from the dog next door."
+
+Leonie shook her head.  "Kitty's dead," she wailed, "lying all black
+and quiet, like--like my dweams!"
+
+There was a moment's pregnant silence, during which Leonie turned round
+and snuffled into the great man's collar, and he frowned above the
+russet head as he drew a block of paper and pencil towards him.
+
+"What dreams, darling?"
+
+"Don' know--dweams I dweam!"
+
+The specialist sat still for a second and then laughed, the great kind
+laugh of a man with a big heart who adores children.
+
+"Let's play a game, Leonie!  You tell me about the dreams, and I'll
+tell you about my new motor-car, and the one who tells best will get a
+big sweet!"
+
+With a child's sudden change of mood Leonie sat up, swinging her black
+silk legs to and fro, her eyes dancing, her lips parted over the even
+little teeth.
+
+"I _love_ sweets!" said she.  "You begin!"
+
+"My car's grey!" said Sir Jonathan Cuxson.  "What colour are your
+dreams?"
+
+"_Black_!" was the unexpectedly decisive reply.  "Black with lots of
+wed--wet wed--and gween eyes--lots and lots of eyes--and--and soft
+things I can't see, and--noises like kit--kit--kitty makes when she
+purrs!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Yes! and people with soft feet like the--the slippers Nannie wears at
+night so that I can't hear them.  And--and that's all!"
+
+She laughed like the child she ought to have been as she bit the end
+off a big pink fondant which had materialised out of one of a dozen
+little drawers in the desk, then holding up the other end to the man
+laughed again spontaneously and delightfully as he pushed the sweet
+into her mouth.
+
+Then he put her on her feet, tilted the little white face back till the
+strong light shone into the opalescent, gold-flecked eyes, kissed the
+curly head and told her to run round the room, open the cabinet doors
+and look at the hidden treasures.
+
+"May I touch them?"
+
+"Of course, sweetheart!"
+
+"I'm vewy sowwy _you_ didn't win," she said in her old-fashioned way,
+"because you are vewy, vewy nice.  And"--she continued, suddenly
+harking hack as a child will to a previous remark--"and it is all vewy,
+vewy black, with a teeny, weeny light like the night-light Nannie
+lights, and----!"
+
+She stopped dead and buried her head in the middle of Sir Jonathan's
+waistcoat, fumbling his coat sleeves with her nervous little hands.
+
+"Yes, darling!" said the man, without a trace of expression in his
+voice as he held up a finger warningly to the woman who had rustled in
+her chair.
+
+"And--and sometimes there's a black woman.  And I'm--I'm fwightened of
+her 'cause she calls me, and--and--pulls me out of bed by my head."
+
+"How do you mean, darling?  Does she catch hold of your hair?  It must
+hurt you dreadfully!"
+
+Leonie suddenly stood up, nervously pulling at the man's top waistcoat
+button as she furtively glanced first over one shoulder and then over
+the other.
+
+"No! she doesn't touch me," she faltered, "and I--I don't always see
+her.  But--but"--she laid her open palm against her forehead in a
+curious little gesture suggestive of the East--"but she pulls me
+through my forehead, and when she pulls I've--I've _got_ to go!  May I
+_hold_ that elephant?"
+
+The brain specialist looked straight into the strange eyes which smiled
+confidingly back into his.
+
+"Just a moment, sweetheart," said he.  "What do your little friends,
+and Nannie, and Auntie say when you tell them about the dreams?"
+
+Leonie leant listlessly against the arm of the chair, and sighed as she
+flashed a lightning glance at her aunt who was turning over a
+periodical on a table by her side.
+
+"I don't tell Nannie because I think she wouldn't weally understand,
+and--and----"
+
+Silence.
+
+"Well, darling?"
+
+"Auntie," she spoke in the merest whisper, "got awful cwoss the first
+time I did tell her.  She was going out to a dance, and I was telling
+her whilst she was dwessing--it was a lovely dwess all sparkles and
+little wosebuds--and I upset a bottle of scent over her gloves.  The
+scent too was like my dweams, just like--like--oh! I don't know, and I
+haven't any!"
+
+Once more the man intuitively bridged the gulf.
+
+"No little friends?  How's that?"
+
+"Bimba died," she announced casually.  "She liked books, too.  It's
+vewy silly thinking dolls are babies, isn't it; that's why I love
+weading, it--it seems weal!"
+
+Lady Hetth broke in hurriedly.
+
+"We simply can't keep her away from books when she's in town.  Of
+course when we are in the country she simply lives out of doors.  It is
+very difficult to keep her amused.  She sulks when she goes to a party
+and always wants to go home!"
+
+"I don't sulk weally, Auntie, I jus'--jus' don' seem to know how to
+play!"
+
+She smiled a wan little smile at the woman who had no children of her
+own, and moved away slowly with a backward doggy look at the man.
+
+"Good God!" he muttered.  "Will you come here, Lady Hetth!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  "When your fear cometh as a desolation."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Susan Hetth rose.
+
+She had always intensely disliked her brother-in-law's old friend,
+failing utterly to perceive the heart of gold studded with rare gems
+that was hidden under a bushel of intentional brusqueness.
+
+But as she was under an obligation to him she decided to make herself
+as pleasant as possible, and to obey his orders, however irksome.
+
+Great brain specialist, great philanthropist, she had rung him up in a
+panic that morning after having vainly ransacked her memory for some
+other human being in whom she could with safety confide her fear, and
+from whom she could expect some meed of succour.
+
+She knew, as everybody knew, that years ago he had given up the hours
+of consultation which had seen his Harley Street waiting-room filled to
+overflowing; that little by little, bit by bit, indeed, he had given
+himself up entirely to research work, travelling in every quarter of
+the globe in his quest for the knowledge necessary to the alleviation
+of the mental troubles of his fellow-beings.  And that when he found it
+or some part of it he had hurried home, and having brought it to as
+near a state of perfection as possible, had flung it broad-cast to the
+suffering; just as he flung the immense sums of money he made among the
+destitute for whom he loved to work without thought of the morrow.
+
+A genuine case of trouble he had never been known to dismiss, and Susan
+Hetth had heaved a sigh of relief into the receiver when he fixed an
+immediate appointment.
+
+The spook of fear is not the cheeriest companion of the early cup of
+tea, and Nannie's words, allied to Nannie's face when she entered
+without knocking, had caused the silly, invertebrate woman to take
+immediate action for once in her life.
+
+Not for anything would she confess it, but she wished now she had
+listened to Nannie when, just a year ago, she had so fervently urged a
+visit to the doctor the first time she had discovered the baby girl
+walking downstairs one step at a time in her sleep.
+
+She remembered the way the ever-changing house-parlourmaids had
+furtively looked at the child when she came in to dessert; how one
+after the other they had given notice, declaring that although they
+really loved the child their nerves would not stand the ever-recurring
+shock of finding her sitting in some corner in the dark; or the
+pattering of her little feet on the stairs when she occasionally evaded
+the nurse and walked about the house in her sleep; and she remembered
+how other nurses who brought baby visitors to tea had watched the
+child, surreptitiously touching their foreheads and wagging their heads
+at each other.
+
+But, as is the way of the supine, she had put it off and put it off
+until her negligence had culminated in the frightful scene of this same
+very early morning, when Leonie, waking in the day nursery to find her
+kitten dead, had screamed and shrieked hour after hour until the
+house-parlourmaid had rushed in and given instant notice, with the
+unsolicited information that the servants thought, and the neighbours
+said, the child was mad and ought to be sent to a home.
+
+Then, indeed, had terror suddenly tweaked Susan Hetth's heart, the
+social one, the maternal one having long since atrophied through want
+of use; for the shadow of lunacy is about the blackest of all the
+shadows that can fall across a butterfly's sunny, heedless path.
+
+Ten years ago she had lost her husband, in the year following most of
+her capital had gone in a mad-cat speculation, and three years later
+her gallant brother-in-law died, leaving her a yearly income sufficient
+for expenses and education if she would undertake to mother his little
+daughter.  Since then she had led the usual abortive life of the woman
+who lives on the past glamour of her husband's success and a limited
+income, upon which she tries ineffectually to dovetail herself into a
+society to which she does not rightly belong.  Having noticed an
+increasing plenitude of silver among the ash-gold of her hair, a
+deepening of the lines of discord between her brows, and the threads of
+discontent which were daily being hemstitched into her face by the
+sharp needles of make-believe, covetousness, and a precarious banking
+account, she had recently decided to try and annex, or rather try and
+graft herself on to a certain unsuspecting male being _en secondes
+noces_.
+
+And that simply cannot be done if there is the slightest shadow upon
+one's appendages.
+
+So she sat down in the chair with as good a grace as she could muster,
+and arranged her big picture hat so that the spring sun should not draw
+Sir Jonathan's attention to the methods she employed to combat the
+rapidity with which what remained of her prettiness, prematurely faded
+by the Indian sun, was vanishing.
+
+For a long and trying moment he sat silently staring at her, wondering
+as he had always wondered what had induced his old friend to place his
+little girl in such inadequate, feeble hands.
+
+To break the tension Lady Hetth clanked a silver Indian bracelet bought
+at Liberty's against an Egyptian chain sold by Swan & Edgar's, and the
+man frowned as he drew a series of cats on his blotting-paper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  "Against stupidity the very gods
+  Themselves contend in vain!"--_Schiller_.
+
+
+"Let me see," he said slowly.  "You have been in India I believe.  I
+wonder if you know anything about it!"
+
+"I lived _ten_ years in the Punjab."  This information was given with
+the intense self-satisfaction peculiar to the feminine Anglo-Indian.
+"With my husband," was added after a rather damping silence, "who was
+knighted for certain--er--work he did in the Indian Civil Service."
+
+"That doesn't mean that you know anything about the country, Mam.
+Leonie has been with you almost seven years, please correct me if I
+make any mistake.  She is seven this month you say.  She was four
+months old when she came over from India.  Did her ayah come with her,
+by the way?  No!  Had she been good to the baby--yes! yes! I know, they
+always are, but these dreams indicate that the child has been badly
+frightened some time or another!"
+
+"But she _couldn't_ be frightened at four months," vacantly interrupted
+Susan Hetth, who could not see the trend of the conversation, or the
+need of the detailed interrogation.  "She would be _far_ too young!"
+
+"Too _young_!" snapped Sir Jonathan.  "Rubbish!  Do you know why you
+are afraid to-day of falling from a height?"
+
+"No," replied Susan Hetth, cordially loathing the man, his methods, and
+his manners.
+
+"Because," he answered roughly, "you were frightened of falling from
+your mother's or your nurse's arms when you were a few months old, and
+the impression of height and fear made upon your baby mind is still
+with you, _that's_ why!"
+
+"The brute!" she thought, as she smiled the propitiatory smile of one
+who is afraid and murmured, "How very interesting!"
+
+"Is there anything else you can tell me about your little niece? no
+matter how trivial a detail!  Has she ever screamed for hours as she
+screamed this morning?  Does she get angry?  I mean mad angry!"
+
+"No!" replied the aunt.  "From what her nurse and daily governess tell
+me she seems to be _remarkably_ sweet-tempered.  You see I don't--I
+haven't--I don't see much of her.  I'm--I've--you see I have _so_ many
+friends over here!"
+
+The man snorted.
+
+"I must say," she continued, "I have _never_ met a child so averse from
+being kissed or being made a fuss of--she _hates_ anyone to touch her,
+even--even _me_, her _mother_, as you might say; but they say she is
+tractable, and has never been known to lose her temper, or slap, or
+scratch, as some children do--no! there is _really_ nothing to tell
+about her--of course she walks a bit in her sleep, at least so her
+Nannie says!"
+
+The specialist's hand crashed on the table.  "Good God, woman!" he
+flung at her, "what in heaven's name _are_ you modern women made of?
+How long has she been walking in her sleep?  Tell me all you know _at
+once_--and remember it's your niece's _brain_ and her future you are
+talking about, so try and describe this sleep-walking with as much
+interest and regard to detail as you would if you were talking about a
+new dress.  Why in heaven's name didn't you send her with the
+nurse--the _servant_--instead of coming yourself--I might have learnt
+something about the child _then_!"
+
+It seemed that Leonie while still quite a baby had walked about the
+night nursery in her sleep; that she had been found in the day nursery
+and on the lower landing, but had always gone back to bed without
+waking; that she muttered a lot of rubbish which the nurse could not
+understand, and was always very tired next day.  That now that she was
+older she slept in a room by herself as she became unaccountably
+restless and wide awake if anyone slept in the room with her.  No! the
+nurse had never noticed the hour or the date, or anything, and that was
+really all, and "couldn't you give the child a dose of bromide."
+
+Which sentence served to finish the history and to bring Sir Jonathan
+with a bound from his chair.
+
+"Bromide," he snarled, "_bromide_!  Now, Lady Hetth, listen to me.
+There is something more than nerves and a highly strung temperament in
+this.  Next week I want Nannie, not _you_, to bring the child here on a
+visit.  I know India and her religions as far as any Englishman dare
+say he knows anything about that unfathomable country--yes! Mam!
+religions--Hinduism--Brahminism--Buddhism--why, I've passed the best
+part of my life trying to unravel certain physical and psychical
+threads knotted up in India; but the years are slipping by, and time is
+getting shorter and shorter, and but a tithe done out of all there is
+to do; but thanks be, my boy has inherited my love for this work, and
+will carry on here when I have crossed the threshold and found the
+solutions to my problems on the other side.  Though I'm sure I don't
+know why I'm telling _you_ all this," he finished brusquely, "we will
+return to India."
+
+"Yes!  India is very, very interesting!" piped Lady Hetth, rising and
+standing on one foot so as to rest the other suffering from an
+oversmall shoe.
+
+"Very, _very_ interesting!" she continued unctuously and with the
+enthusiasm she reserved as a rule for the S.P.C.K.I, which letters
+stand for an attempt to graft a new creed on to the tree of religion in
+India which was bearing _fruit_ at a period when we were hobnobbing in
+caves, with a boulder or good stout club as reasons for existence.
+
+"I'll write and tell you when to send the child and her nurse, and
+between us we'll manage to keep her amused.  And in the meantime stop
+all lessons and let her do exactly as she likes, and feed her up, Mam,
+feed her up, her bones are simply coming through her skin."
+
+Again he laughed a great rumbling laugh, as lifting the child from the
+ground he felt the little hands in his mane of white hair.
+
+"You're nice," she decided, "vewy nice."
+
+"Like to come and stay with me?"
+
+"Oh, yes! if you won't--won't make me----!"
+
+She stopped short.
+
+"Well! what--won't make you what?"
+
+"Nothing--Auntie pulled my dwess!"
+
+The door closed softly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  "The kindest man,
+  The best conditioned and unwearied spirit
+  In doing courtesies."--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+They met on the threshold.
+
+Swinging back the door to let Leonie and her aunt out, Ellen, the
+middle-aged maid, almost an heirloom in the family of Cuxson, bristling
+in starched cap and apron, let in the erstwhile plague of her life, but
+now as ever the light of her eyes, Jonathan Cuxson, Junior.
+
+He took Lady Hetth's hand in a mighty and painful grip when after a
+moment's hesitation she introduced herself.
+
+"Why, of course!  You must be Jan!  Except for being bigger you haven't
+changed a bit since I saw you years ago one Speech Day at Harrow!"  She
+looked with open admiration at the very personable young man before her
+who loomed large in the hall with his height of six feet two and a
+tremendous width of shoulder.  His eyes were grey, and as honest as a
+genuine fine day; the jaw was just saved from a shadow of brutality in
+its strength by a remarkably fine mouth; the ears were splendid from an
+intellectual point of view, and the set of the head on the neck, and
+the neck on the shoulders, perfect.  The nose was a good nose, rather
+broad at the top, with those delicate sensitive nostrils which usually
+spell trouble for the owner.
+
+"I don't believe you remember me!"
+
+Happily the reply which must have been untrue or given in the negative
+was averted by the hilarious arrival of a puppy.
+
+Having heard the deep voice associated in its canine mind with bits of
+cake and joyous roughs-and-tumbles, it had forsaken the happy though
+forbidden hunting ground of the upper storeys and negotiated the stairs
+in a series of bumps and misses.
+
+Arrived in the hall it hurled itself blindly against Leonie's ankles,
+and ricocheted on to its master's boots, where it essayed a _pas seul_
+on its hind legs in its efforts to reach the strong brown hand.
+
+"Oh!" said Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched
+to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which
+thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front
+ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three
+times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes
+and trickled down the white face.
+
+"Hello, kiddie!  You're crying!" said Jan Cuxson, who like his father
+had a positive mania for protecting and helping those in trouble, which
+mania got him into an infinite and varied amount of trouble himself,
+and led him into unexpected boles and corners of the earth.  "I'm--I'm
+not crying weally!" choked Leonie, "it's--it's my kitten!"
+
+"Oh! do stop, Leonie!" said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child's
+hand and pull her to her feet.  "She's coming to stay with you," she
+added, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chin
+which comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched the
+puppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot in a corner.
+
+"That's jolly," said the young man.
+
+"Oh! she's coming as a case.  She walks a good deal in her sleep, and
+as my brother-in-law, Colonel Hetth, if you remember, was such a----"
+
+But Jan Cuxson was not listening.
+
+He too had put his hand on the curly head and tilted it back gently so
+that the light shone into the sorrow-laden eyes encircled by shadows.
+
+Then he smiled suddenly down at the mite, and she, perceiving that a
+ray of light had suddenly pierced the all-pervading gloom, smiled back,
+and catching his left hand in both of hers pressed it to her forehead.
+
+"Good Lord!" he muttered, as a thrill ran through him at the unexpected
+and oriental action.
+
+And Fate, plucking in senile fashion at the loose ends which lay
+nearest her old hand, knotted two tightly together with a bit of rare
+golden strand she kept tucked away in her bodice.
+
+"And what shall we do when you come?  Can you ride?  I know of a lovely
+pony a little boy rides!"
+
+Leonie shook her head mournfully, feeling unconsciously but acutely the
+penalty of her sex for the first time in her life.
+
+"I can't wide astwide," she sighed, "I haven't any bweeches.  Jill and
+Maudie Wetherbourne always wide in skirts.  But I can swim," she added
+quickly, "an' jump in out of my depff.  I learnt in the baff at the
+seaside!"
+
+"Oh! come along, child, _do_!" broke in her aunt to her own undoing.
+
+"Auntie jumps in too, though she says she doesn't," proceeded Leonie in
+a gallant effort to shore up her family's sporting reputation.
+
+"I do _not_, Leonie!  I can't imagine how you ever got such an idea
+into your head!"
+
+But Leonie, nothing daunted, shook back her russet mop of hair and gave
+direct answer, to the confusion of the domestic who happily stood out
+of Lady Hetth's eye-range.
+
+"But, Auntie!  I've _often_ heard Wilkins tell Nannie that you've been
+in off the deep end before bweakfast!  Oh! do let me hold him just for
+ever such a little while!"
+
+To save the expression of his face Jan Cuxson had bent and lifted the
+pup by the scruff of its neck, and upon the piteous appeal put it
+squirming and wriggling in the outstretched arms.
+
+Great tears dripped all over the animal though Leonie stood on one
+foot, bit her underlip, and squeezed the puppy to suffocation in a
+valiant effort to restrain this appalling sign of weakness.
+
+"Tell me what makes you cry like that?"
+
+"My--my kitten was--was stwangled by--by someone this morning, an'--an'
+she was all soft an'--an' fluffy like----"
+
+The words ended in a paroxysm of sobs muffled in the puppy's coat
+whereupon it ecstatically licked every visible part of the child's
+neck, whilst Ellen, throwing decorum to the winds, knelt down and drew
+the shaking little figure into her arms.
+
+"Anybody in there!" suddenly and very gruffly asked Jan Cuxson, jerking
+his head in the direction of the room where the few and favoured
+awaited the pleasure of the specialist.
+
+"No, Sir," replied Ellen, as she disentangled one of the puppy's claws
+from the lace on Leonie's sleeve.  "I'm going to call my father!  I
+don't think you understand your little girl very well!"
+
+He spoke quite gently but his face was white with anger, that almost
+terrifying rage which surges over and through the mentally and
+physically strong at the sight, or thought, of cruelty to the small and
+weak.
+
+He whistled two exceedingly sharp notes and plunged his hands into his
+pockets, where he scrunched up his keys and some loose change.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"The liberal soul shall be made fat."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Well! well! well!"
+
+Sir Jonathan walked over to the child and knelt down beside her as the
+maid rose and straightened her crumpled apron.
+
+"Let me have the doggie, darling!"
+
+"No!--no!--_no_!  I--I love him.  He's all soft and cuddley.  I want to
+hold him for jus' a little, little longer!"
+
+The child's voice was shrill with excitement as she pulled back from
+the encircling arms, her lips quivering, her eyes staring distractedly
+first at the younger man then at the dog.
+
+"Would you like to have Jingles, kiddie?"
+
+The change in the child's face was electrifying, and Sir Jonathan,
+rising with his eyes fixed upon her, touched his son's arm to draw his
+attention to it.
+
+Tears like dewdrops on brown pansy petals hung heavily from the lashes,
+but the corners of the mouth turned up in an adorable smile, and waves
+of gratitude and delight swept up from chin to brow obliterating the
+agony of the past hours.
+
+"For _me_--to _keep_?" she whispered, as she stood on her toes in an
+instinctive effort to make the body reach and unite with the mind at
+the highest point of this most perfect moment, whilst her little breast
+heaved with the repressed sobs of her fully laden heart.
+
+"Yes! for keeps, little one!"
+
+The three elders stood silently, the specialist watching intently the
+light which kindled in the child's eyes as she looked from one to the
+other before she bent her head over the dog she had completely
+surrounded with her arms.
+
+Jan Cuxson made a movement to end a situation which was bordering on
+cruelty when Lady Hetth anticipated him with her customary dire
+tactlessness.
+
+"There now, Leonie!  _Now_ perhaps you'll be satisfied.  Give Mr.
+Cuxson a kiss and say thank you nicely!"
+
+Leonie would have cheerfully put her hand in the fire to serve this
+wonderful being who royally distributed gifts, and _live_ ones at that,
+and only hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before, her face
+suffused with crimson, she walked up to him.
+
+"Of course if--if you want me to--I'll--I'll kiss you," she said
+heroically, unconsciously squeezing the puppy under the stress of the
+awful moment until it yelped, "but I'd--I'd wather----"  She stopped
+and looked up hurriedly into the understanding face of the elder man.
+
+He nodded as he caught her eye so that she finished all in a hopeful
+burst.
+
+"But I'd wather not if you don't mind!"
+
+Lady Hetth frowned and put out her hand, murmuring something about
+really having to go.
+
+"I'll send for her and Nannie, Lady Hetth.  And keep her out of doors
+as much as possible.  Why don't you take her to the Zoo this afternoon?"
+
+"I couldn't _possibly_!" came the prompt and irritable reply.
+
+"What about me!" interrupted Jan Cuxson.  "Eh! kiddie?  You and I
+riding big, fat elephants at the Zoo!"
+
+"_You_--and _Jingles_--and _me_!" said Leonie, disengaging her hand
+from her aunt's.  "And you," she said sweetly, laying it on the elder
+man's coat sleeve.
+
+Heaven had opened wide its gates and she was for pulling everybody in
+with her, and her eyes danced, and so did her patent shod feet on the
+rug.
+
+"It's _too_ kind of you, Jan!" broke in her aunt.  "I really don't like
+to let you waste your time with a child!"
+
+"Not at all, Lady Hetth!  I love kids--and the Zoo.  Where shall I
+bring her to afterwards?"
+
+"Oh!  Yes! bring her to the Ladies' Union Club where I am staying.  No!
+you'd better take her to her Nannie as they don't allow children in the
+Club, thank goodness.  They are staying in York Street, Baker Street,
+quite convenient for you."
+
+She trailed through the door as she spoke, pouring out a cascade of
+vapid thanks and announcing also that she had shopping to do at
+Debenham and Freebody's.
+
+She hadn't, she was going to catch an omnibus in Cavendish Square,
+being of those who, blindly extravagant in most things, think they
+economise when spoiling their clothes and temper in a penny ha'penny
+bus, instead of keeping both unruffled in a taxi, at two shillings.
+
+Ellen, returning later triumphantly with a taxi, held wide the door, a
+wide and loving smile across her plain face.
+
+"You come too, Sir," said Jan Cuxson.  "Do you heaps of good to ride an
+elephant!"
+
+"I only wish I could, boy," said the man as he laid one hand on the
+shoulder of the son he loved, and the other on Leonie's head.  "But
+I've much to do in that opium case, and I'm dining out, and shall read
+a bit when I get back----"
+
+"And I'm dining out too, more's the nuisance, otherwise I could help.
+Sure to be awfully late as it's a farewell dinner to a fellow at the
+hospital----"
+
+"Well!  See you in the morning!  Good-bye, sweetheart, I won't forget
+the book, and just you make that lazy fellow show you everything!"
+
+He bent and kissed Leonie as she lifted her face, which was an
+unheard-of thing for her to do, and watched her as, hugging the
+struggling dog, she ran down the steps and was lifted into the taxi by
+her companion.
+
+With his foot on the step Jan hesitated, then turned and walked back to
+his father.
+
+"I don't know why.  Sir, but I do wish you'd come too," he said slowly,
+looking at the man he loved with a love past the comprehension of the
+younger generation of the present day.
+
+He put out his hand as he spoke and gripped the elder man's hard, then
+ran down the steps, jumped in beside Leonie, and turned to wave
+hilariously with her as they sped away to the Zoo.
+
+The brain specialist went back thoughtfully to his room, and when he
+had closed the door stood for a long time looking out at the little
+garden with its one big tree.
+
+"I wonder, I _wonder_," he mused.  "I'd give a good deal to get at that
+ayah--well! why not?--I could start for----"  He looked round suddenly,
+then laughed as he passed his hand over his eyes.  "Funny!  I thought
+someone opened the door."
+
+He moved to his desk and turned over his diary, showing blank page
+after blank page.
+
+"Strange," he muttered.  "There is nothing written down after to-day,
+not a single engagement.  I must have entered them in some other book;
+very careless of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  "And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry
+  in their desolate homes."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Gawd!"
+
+Mrs. Henry Higgins called upon the Almighty in the vernacular of Seven
+Dials, sought gropingly for the members of her progeny who clutched her
+skirt, and fortunately kept her head.
+
+"'Enery James--no!  Gertrude Ellen--you've gotter better headpiece,
+jest yer slip along to the keeper an' tell _'im_ to look slippy and
+come along quick _h'and_ quiet!"
+
+Gertrude Ellen, puffed up with pride at the pull she had had over her
+brother, slipped off, as her mother continued in a raucous whisper,
+"Now if that young miss don't deserve a thorough good 'iding!  I'd take
+the skin off yer if any of yer did such a fing, strite I would.  Drat
+yer, keep stilt cawn't yer--you'll rouse the brute!"
+
+She shook her skirts so that the half-dozen clinging children rattled
+like a bunch of keys, pushed her jet bonnet back from the shiny
+wrinkled forehead, and waited, her motherly heart aquake in spite of
+her drastic language.
+
+Jan Cuxson was standing in front of the lions' cage at one end of the
+lion-house, talking to his old friend the keeper, under the impression
+that Leonie was close beside him; but she, having taken advantage of
+their conversation and a practically empty house, had slipped quietly
+away, climbed the barrier near the far window, and was _also_ holding
+conversation--with a tiger from Bengal.
+
+The animal lay outstretched with his wonderful head close to the bars,
+and his unblinking opalescent gold-flecked eyes staring straight into
+the opalescent gold-flecked eyes of the child as she stood on tip-toe
+so that her face was almost on a level with that of the animal.
+
+"_Poor_ tiger!" she was saying.  "I'm vewwy sowwy for you--I'm sure
+you're not so vewy, vewy wicked, an' if you will bend your head I will
+stwoke you behind the ear same as I did Kitty."
+
+Mrs. Henry Higgins gasped.
+
+Holding on to one bar tightly just near the tiger's mouth so as to
+steady herself, Leonie stretched, and thrusting her hand inside began
+to rub the tiger's head quite forcibly behind the ear.
+
+"Nice?" she inquired as the animal closed its eyes under the unexpected
+and unexperienced caress, then opening them lifted the beautiful head
+and yawned to the full capacity of the huge mouth, affording Leonie a
+front row view of the splendid ivories and pale pink tongue.
+
+"Oh--h--h!" said she admiringly, standing flat and patting the nearest
+paw.  "I _do_ like you though you _do_ fwighten me when you walk so
+softly in my dweams--oh--h--h!"
+
+She shivered with ecstasy as the tiger rolled on its back, displaying
+its soft white belly as it bit its hind foot with the abandon of a
+baby, then turned on its side, and leaping sideways to its feet, slunk
+off to the far corner of the miserable den, which is all a civilised
+country gives a wild animal in exchange for its jungle home.
+
+Meanwhile the Higgins brood, like hungry sparrows on a rail, were
+sitting open-mouthed on the lower steps provided for the benefit of
+those spectators who wish to revel with safety in the degrading sight
+of the royal beasts fed with lumps of bleeding meat pushed through the
+lower bar on the end of a prong.
+
+Rendered somewhat incoherent by fear, and haste, allied to the ghastly
+English she had acquired in the streets and been allowed to retain in
+the Council School, Gertrude Ellen had found it somewhat difficult to
+arouse the keeper to a realisation of the impending disaster.
+
+But when he _did_ look over his shoulder in the direction her dirty
+little hand was pointing he swore a mighty oath and acted promptly.
+
+"Keep still, Sir, for the love of heaven!" he whispered, catching hold
+of Jan Cuxson's arm as the latter made a step forward.  "Don't let that
+there animal see yer, he's the blamedest, cussedest brute I've ever had
+to do with.  Never had a civil growl from him since he came here over
+three years ago."
+
+Whilst speaking the man had hurriedly discarded his boots and climbed
+inside the barrier, whilst Cuxson held the child quiet by her thin
+little shoulders.
+
+"Damn that woman," went on the keeper, "why can't she keep still.  Sure
+as blazes if that there tiger sees her, which don't mean if he's
+_looking_ at her, he'll go nasty and have that missy's 'and off."
+
+Mrs. Higgins, having clumped her brood into silence, was making frantic
+and what she imagined to be surreptitious signals of distress with her
+left arm, keeping her eyes glued on Leonie, who was clinging to the
+bars with both hands whilst calling upon the tiger to come back.
+
+He came back, half crouched, noiselessly, stealthily, the hair of the
+belly almost touching the ground, for all the world like a cat about to
+spring upon an unsuspecting sparrow.
+
+He came to a standstill within an inch of the bars and threw his
+pointed ears straight forward so that they stood out at right angles to
+the beautifully marked face; spasmodically twitched back the mouth
+without a sound issuing therefrom, and then lay down and pressed his
+head against the bars.
+
+The tiny hand was stroking the silky ears, patting the head, and
+prodding contentedly into the thick fur of the neck when suddenly with
+a mighty heart-quaking roar the tiger leapt up and back, and then
+hurled himself at the bars.
+
+The keeper had crept, bent double, along the inside of the barrier, and
+had most suddenly and surprisingly seized Leonie by the waist and
+wrenched her free from the bars to which she had tried to cling,
+holding her like a vice in his arms where she vainly kicked and
+struggled for freedom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  ". . . that man could not be altogether cleared
+  from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now
+  does."--_Plutarch_.
+
+
+The whole house was in an uproar.
+
+The lions were trotting round and round, stopping to listen and snuff in
+the sawdust near the bars; the stumpy jaguar, black as ink, with a body
+like a steel case, was rushing up and down, rubbing its forehead fiercely
+as it turned; a lion and his mate were rearing themselves one after the
+other against the walls, half turning from the middle to fall almost
+backward in that peculiar movement which reminds one forcibly of great
+succeeding waves stopped and thrown back upon themselves by some bleak
+rock.
+
+People were pushing and straining to look in at the windows, and rattling
+the doors which had been hurriedly locked by the keepers who had rushed
+to ascertain the cause of the tumult, whilst the tiger made the place
+resound with its terrific roars as it hurled its huge weight again and
+again at the bars of its cage.
+
+"Come _on_, Mother," shouted the keeper above the din, "bring all those
+children and let's get out.  They'll quieten down when we've gone.  Can't
+you _read_!"
+
+He shook Leonie slightly under the stress of his agitation as he hauled
+her in front of the notice which commands you to refrain from climbing
+the barrier.
+
+"Of course I can wead," she replied with dignity; "I'm weading the
+little----"
+
+"Well! read _that_!"
+
+"But--but"--stammered Leonie, having read with difficulty--"but I knew
+the tiger, Mr. Keeper!"
+
+"_Oh_! yes! of course!  You were tiger 'unting and brought him from the
+Sunderbunds about four years ago; it wasn't the gentleman, of course not!"
+
+"But weally," pleaded Leonie with the tears very near, "weally I've--I've
+dweamed lots about him, and--and--and----"
+
+"Take her away, Sir--she makes me see red she does.  No thank you.
+Sir--very much obliged, but it's part of my duty to see that people
+_don't_ climb the barrier, and I kind of failed--p'raps the little girl
+what came and----"
+
+They were outside by this time and the centre of an interested admiring
+crowd; it is only bleeding meat at three o'clock as a rule which can
+rouse the inhabitants of the lion house from their prison apathy.
+
+Taking the dirty little paw Cuxson, crumpling up a note, put it into the
+dirty little palm and closed the fingers tightly over it.  Whereupon
+Gertrude Ellen blushed furiously, and went to her mother with her
+clenched fist behind her back, where she kept it stiffly until tea-time,
+when she held out the bit of paper without a word, to the tune of "Lawks
+a mercy me!" from her mother, who immediately ordered more buns on the
+strength of it.
+
+"Lor' bless yer, lovey!" said Mrs. Higgins, whose bonnet was bobbing on
+the nape of her neck, leaving the wisps of hair to straggle
+unrestrainedly in the honest grey eyes, as she knelt on the ground and
+tugged Leonie's short skirts into place.  "Yer did give us a turn,
+dearie; yer might 'av 'ad yer 'and nipped orf by that there brute.  Come
+'_ere_, Lil and 'Erb--I'll 'ave yer eaten by the camuls next!"
+
+The bow-legged twins, with their spirit of adventure quashed, rolled back
+to mother, and stood wide-eyed as she ran her work-worn hand through the
+stranger's luxuriant curls.
+
+"Give us a kiss, lovey, an' go an' get some tea!"
+
+For the second time that day Leonie moved to obey the same command, but
+this time there was no hesitation as she put her thin arms round the
+woman's neck and kissed her sweetly once and again.
+
+And the woman, who sensed something amiss in the quivering little body,
+held her firmly, patting her gently with the same hand which dealt out
+indiscriminately such resounding and often well-earned smacks among her
+own; and Leonie sighed and leant confidingly against the stout, badly
+corseted figure.
+
+"How comfy," she whispered shyly.  "How soft you are.  Auntie never holds
+me in her arms, and when Nannie does she's always full of bits of things
+that stick _out_."
+
+And then with a little scream of delight she was away, speeding over the
+gravel in the wake of a lumbering great form wending its way in and out
+of the crowd.
+
+"Cut along, Sir, or you'll find her 'obnobbing with the gorilla next!
+I've never _seen_ such a child for downright mischievousness."
+
+Cuxson cut along as bidden and for all he was worth, pulling Leonie up in
+front of the ticket office for elephant rides, and after purchasing
+tickets sidetracked her to a tea-table.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"Mind you bring Jingles when you come to stay!"
+
+"Pwomise," called back Leonie from her Nannie's arms as she opened the
+door to them and lifted the tired happy child from the taxi.
+
+But she didn't because she never went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  "And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
+  Against the use of nature.  Present fears
+  Are less than horrible imaginings."--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+Big Ben announced the approaching hour of midnight, throwing the
+sonorous notes to the soft spring wind which wafted them up to Harley
+Street.
+
+Save for the light thrown by the dancing flames of a log fire, and the
+orange disc made on the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, the
+room was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional crackle of the
+wood fire and the faint rustle as Sir Jonathan turned a page.
+
+"Notes" was written in letters of brass across the thick book heavily
+bound in leather, and of which the small key to the massive Bramah lock
+was kept in a pocket especially made in every waistcoat Sir Jonathan
+possessed.
+
+Slowly he read through the page he had just written, crossing a t,
+dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which was
+in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he had
+read he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, and
+pushed the book further back on to the desk.
+
+It is an eerie sound that of someone speaking aloud to himself, and
+still more eerie when it occurs in the middle of the night when the
+only part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong white hands
+moving in the orange disc thrown on the desk by the heavily shaded lamp.
+
+And it is a strange habit this talking aloud of the solitary soul.
+
+Mad?
+
+Not a bit.
+
+Dumb in the babel and din of chaotic midday, unresponsive to the
+uncongenial matter around, it will talk on subjects gay and grave, and
+even laugh with the silent sympathetic shades of midnight.
+
+Nevertheless it is mighty eerie to hear it unawares.
+
+For the twentieth time the famous specialist picked up a letter and
+read it from beginning to end.
+
+"Strange, Jim, old fellow," said he as he laid it down, "strange how I
+think of you to-night.  Seeing your little one, I suppose.  But somehow
+to-night more than ever I feel the blank you made in my life when you
+left.  How you'd have loved the kiddie, Jim.  Strange wee soul with a
+shadow already on her life--a big black shadow, Jim, which I--I am
+going----!"
+
+He turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Ugh!" he said, as he turned back to the desk and drew the book towards
+him.
+
+"Leonie Hetth--age seven--walks in her sleep and dreams--dreams are
+evidently of India--things that walk softly and purr--a small
+light--and wet red which may mean blood--green eyes and a black woman
+who--who----"
+
+Once more he ran his hand through his hair, but time irritably, then
+shook his head from side to side rubbed his hand across his eyes.
+
+"I've been sitting up too late these last few nights over that opium
+case.  Don't seem to be able to collect or hold my thoughts.  Jim, old
+fellow, I wonder what made you leave Leonie in the care of that damn
+silly, shallow woman, and I wonder how you could ever have produced
+anything so highly strung and temperamental as your little daughter.  I
+sup----"
+
+He stopped quite suddenly and rose, standing with his head bent forward.
+
+There was not a sound!
+
+Feeling for the arm of his chair with his face still turned to the
+curtained window he sank back, only to spring upright with a bound.
+
+Noiselessly, swiftly he crossed to the window, and pulling back the
+curtain an inch or two peered out into the small garden with its one
+tree and border of shrubs.
+
+There was no sound and nothing moved.
+
+"Strange!" he muttered, "I could have sworn some-one knocked."
+
+He jerked back the curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod,
+letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew a
+nimbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced and
+gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and in
+and out of the open safe.
+
+He turned, but stopped abruptly when half-way across the room, standing
+stock still with his back to the window.
+
+There was a faint distinct tapping as though slender fingers were
+beating a ghastly, distant drum.
+
+It stopped--it continued--it stopped.
+
+Then fell one little solitary rap like a drop of water falling on a
+metal plate, and it died away into silence.
+
+And Sir Jonathan threw up his fine old head and laughed.
+
+"Surely I've got India on the brain to-night, and as surely I want a
+good long holiday," he said, as he sat down at his desk and picked up
+his pen.  "And I must remember to tell the gardener to clip that tree
+to-morrow.  How Jan will laugh when I tell him that I was absolutely
+scared by a branch rubbing against the window."
+
+For five long minutes he sat frowning down at the pen in his hand.
+Three times he commenced to write, and three times he stopped; twice he
+lit a cigarette and let it go out, and deeper grew the lines between
+the brows and round the mouth, until he shivered and turned quickly in
+his chair.
+
+"That felt just like a sea-fog creeping up behind; stupid to keep the
+window open even in spring," he said as he picked up a log from a
+basket by his side and threw it deftly into the wide-open grate, leant
+sideways to separate two brass ornaments on a table which had jangled
+one against the other, and sighing turned restlessly in his chair.
+
+"Confound those great market lorries," he muttered, looking round the
+room with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange and weird,
+beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought back from every corner of
+the globe.  "They shake the house enough to bring it down about one's
+ears."
+
+The moon was slowly shifting as he leant back and settled himself
+comfortably in the high leather chair; the room was getting darker and
+there had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness which envelops
+most great cities after midnight, and against which his thoughts stood
+out like steel points upon a velvet curtain.
+
+Clear and sharp as steel they shot indeed, this way and that through
+his mind; but hold them he could not, analyse or arrange them he could
+not, neither would his hand move towards the pen a few inches from the
+finger-tips.
+
+"God!" he suddenly thundered, striking the arm of the chair with his
+fist.  "The answer is just there on the tip of my tongue--before my
+very eyes--within reach of my fingers, and yet I cannot grasp it--ah!
+why! could it _possibly_ be----"
+
+He rose as he spoke and crossed to a massive bookcase packed to
+overflowing with books, switched on a light hanging near, opened the
+glass door and ran his hand lovingly over the leather volumes.
+
+Then he very gently laid his hand on his left shoulder and turned with
+a smile lighting up his face, which abruptly went blank in astonishment.
+
+"Upon my word," he said, "whatever made me think that Jan had come in
+and had put his hand upon my shoulder.  Old fool that I am to-night."
+
+For a moment he stood looking into the shadowy corners, then turned
+again to the case, ran his finger along a row of books until he came to
+one with the title "India," pulled it out and opened it under the light.
+
+The book opened quite suddenly and wide, and his eyes fell on the first
+few lines.  Without a movement he stood staring down at the printed
+words, reading to the end of the page, then he violently closed the
+book, thrust it back into the case, and closing the doors, pressed
+against them with both hands as though in an endeavour to keep back
+something which was trying to get out.
+
+"No! my God!  No! never! not that--not _that_ as an end--not for _that_
+baby--and yet----"
+
+He moved across to the desk, sank heavily like a very old man into his
+chair and covered his face with his hands.
+
+Then very slowly and as though against his will he uncovered his face,
+and leaning forward stared across to the bookcase whilst he groped for
+the pen beside the book.
+
+"And the cure," he muttered, "the remedy--I _must_ find it--I--I----"
+
+His heart was thudding heavily with the merest suspicion of a complete
+pause between the beats, his hand trembled almost imperceptibly, whilst
+his eyes glanced questioningly this way and that.
+
+"I don't understand, I don't understand!" he whispered, just like a
+frightened child as he plucked at his collar and moved his head quickly
+from side to side as though trying to loosen some stranglehold about
+his neck.
+
+He turned and stared unseeingly into the fire with the look of
+perplexity deepening on his face, then slowly he raised his eyes, first
+to the delicate tracings of the Adams mantelpiece, then to the varied
+ornaments on the shelf.
+
+"Tish!" he said impatiently as they roved from the central figure of
+benign undisturbed Buddha, to a snake of brass holding a candle, and on
+to a blatant and grotesque dragon from China.
+
+For a second he stared uncomprehendingly, then raised his head.
+
+Inch by inch his eyes moved until they reached the top shelf of the
+overmantel and stopped.  A shiver shook him as he lay back in his
+chair, his widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny bead
+of perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.
+
+Staring down at him, shining evilly in the moonlight, was a glistening,
+unwavering eye.
+
+Just a slanting mother-o'-pearl eye in the battered head of a god or
+goddess of India, with features almost obliterated by the passage of
+centuries.
+
+For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat staring up at the eye which stared
+back; then moving with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through the
+mane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing load from about
+his head; and turning sideways in his chair stretched out one hand
+between the eye above and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in the
+shaking fingers.
+
+"Ah! my God!" he muttered, "the answer is still there, on the tip of my
+tongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers, and I cannot grasp
+it--ah!--yes----"
+
+Slowly and with infinite pain he wrote, printing the letters in thick
+and crooked capitals, whilst his breath whistled through the dilated
+nostrils and one foot beat unceasingly against the desk.
+
+"The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is in the third
+volume upon----"
+
+His hand stopped suddenly when the fingers involuntarily spread wide
+apart, letting fall the pen which rolled across the book; and the
+silvery head turned inch by inch until the grey eyes had lifted to the
+one shining in the shadows.
+
+And there commenced a desperate, a bitter struggle for a child's
+reason, perhaps for a child's life, as the moon gently withdrew her
+light.
+
+Like the clammy wraiths of fog upon the moor, like the searching
+tentacles of some blind monster of the sea, fear crept upon the
+splendid old man in this still hour of the night.
+
+It held his hands, it was folded about his mouth, it pounded violently
+upon his gallant heart, whilst the eye looked him between the eyes, so
+that his brain was seared as strive he might to turn away his head he
+kept his face turned piteously upward.
+
+"What is it," he muttered thickly, as though his tongue clove to the
+roof of the mouth, "what is it that is pulling me, pressing upon me,
+choking me!  I have no body, no--no hands--I--have--no power to
+move--I----"
+
+And then he screamed, though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodic
+jump of his whole body he flung himself round in his chair, and
+cowering low against the arm, peered into the deepening shadows.
+
+"All round about me," he whispered, "all about me those hands are
+pulling, and yet--and--and----"
+
+He laughed until his face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall,
+grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one
+clenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud,
+useless, against the chair.
+
+"I thought I was afraid--I--I thought I saw--I saw death behind--but
+I--I shall not die until--until I have written--written--what is it I
+am to write--ah! yes!"
+
+Searching sideways with his left hand he groped and found the pen, then
+very carefully, very slowly turned towards the desk.
+
+He drove the pen in fiercely, making a thick black mark; he pushed it
+until the nib stuck, spluttered, and broke as he flung out both hands
+as if grasping at something which evaded him.
+
+"Gone!" he mouthed, though there was no sound of speech in the room.
+"Gone--gone!" and he suddenly tore at his collar and his cuffs as
+though to break some bond which held him, as he glanced furtively about
+the room.
+
+For one long moment he sat leaning forward, staring far beyond the
+Indian screen upon which his eyes were fixed, and then slowly, almost
+imperceptibly, his head moved.
+
+The drawn white face had the hunted look of some animal at bay, the
+agonised eyes moved as the head moved; slowly, slowly, inch by inch,
+the breath coming stertorously as the mouth tried vainly to frame some
+word.
+
+The moon had gathered the last fold of her silvery raiment about her
+and was creeping away through the open window just as Sir Jonathan
+looked straight up into the eye gleaming malevolently through the gloom.
+
+And as he looked the head moved gently so that the eye leered cunningly
+into the distorted face beneath; it, hovered for a fraction of time on
+the edge of the shelf and fell, just as the old man, with a blinding
+flash of understanding sweeping his face, sprang to his feet, stood
+upright, swayed forward, and fell back sideways, dead, across his
+chair, staring across the room into eternity with eyes full of
+knowledge and infinite horror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  "How have I hated instruction, and my heart
+  despised reproof!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Oh! dear!"
+
+The plaintive ejaculation fell on the drowsy noonday air, and the
+speaker fished a chocolate out of the box, offered her in heartfelt
+sympathy by her companion.
+
+"Buck up, old thing!" said the latter.  "These very same old exam rods
+were laid up in pickle for our forbears, and they survived the ordeal.
+The summer's here and the holidays are due, so let's grin and bear it,
+and what _does_ it matter if you _do_ mix your futures and
+conditionals?  As long as it's French and you don't split your
+infinitives you're all right, the splitting, I believe, _is_ a mortal
+sin in some cases, though I don't quite understand how, or exactly what
+it means."
+
+Seaview House is an establishment for the finishing of young ladies,
+which process includes the rounding of their anatomical angles by means
+of dancing and physical culture, and the polishing of the facets of
+their intelligence by the gentle manipulation of three or four foreign
+governesses and professors of music, singing, drawing, etc.  These
+latter smile suavely through the excruciating half-hours they allot to
+each unfinished damsel, and tear their hair in private at the memory of
+the daily and hourly murderous executions of the old masters at which
+they must perforce assist.
+
+And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repoussé work on
+the outside of the platter.
+
+The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of the
+two score damsels bob about in the sun like globes of ebony, or straw,
+or Dutch cheese, or ginger; finger nails shine like old cut glass, just
+enough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until they
+look more like figures and less like sacks of barley, or wood planks.
+They are taught to sit down and stand up, and to cross, enter or leave
+a room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low and
+gracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed in
+the absence of those in temporary power.  In fact the establishment is
+quite old-fashioned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation of
+having more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageously
+married, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any other
+school in Eastbourne.
+
+Which is all as it should be!
+
+"Yes! but," continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appear
+in the book again so that it really does not matter about her
+nomenclature.  "I could just see Leonie from my desk and she was
+smiling all over her face and romping, simply _romping_ through the
+French papers."
+
+"Oh! but," sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reason
+that we christened Annie Smith, "_she_ has a brain!"
+
+Nice Susan Brown hadn't, but balanced the lack by a wealthy parentage.
+
+"Yes! of course she has!  And _isn't_ she beautiful!"
+
+Nice Annie Smith was as plain as a bun, but balanced her defect by a
+heart of gold, and found her ultimate and perfect joy in an overworked
+curate and seven children by him, all of whom were destined to sit
+round the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on a
+plate.
+
+"Yes! isn't she!  She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very different
+to all of us."
+
+"I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary," rather
+importantly added Susan Brown, "_bizarre_----"
+
+"Whatever does it mean?" inquired Annie Smith, who was destined never
+again to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of her
+neutral life.
+
+"Er--a kind of a--er--_je ne sais quoi_ in the temperament--not exactly
+a nonconformist, you know; but just a little--well, not _quite_ like
+_us_!"
+
+"I see!" contentedly replied mystified Annie Smith.  "But I _do_ love
+her; she's such a dear.  So gentle and so ready to help everybody, and
+so _splendid_ at sports.  What tremendous friends she and Jessica have
+become, haven't they, since the night of the scare?  I often wonder
+what made her walk in her sleep like that; she's never done it since."
+
+"Indigestion, I've always thought.  Cookie was away on her holidays, if
+you remember, and her _locum tenens_, understudy, you know, made pastry
+like cement; I always thought, too, that Principal gave her that lovely
+little room right away from the rest of us on account of it--the
+sleep-walking, I mean.  I'm sure I should have _died_ if I'd found her
+standing over me in the moonlight in the middle of the night.  It must
+be awfully jolly though having someone in India who writes to you every
+three months.  _Isn't_ she lucky to have been _born_ in India, and to
+have had an ayah, a kind of native nurse, you know, who _still_
+worships her, and writes to her, and sends _real_ Indian presents, and
+to have had a V.C. for a father--Leonie, I mean?"
+
+Annie Smith laughed that happy laugh which is the outcome of a
+perfectly contented mind.  "She deserves all the luck she gets, and
+what luck for _us_ having her as head next term.  What a favourite she
+is with everyone, even old Signer Valenti!  Oh, dear, I wish
+to-morrow's exams were over; my fingers feel just like blanc-mange when
+I think of that nocturne."
+
+"Never say die, Ann!  _Have_ you heard Leonie play the Moonlight?"
+
+"No!  What's it like?"
+
+"Simply _awful_, just like Mam'zel when she thumps downstairs in her
+felt slippers."
+
+There fell a space of drowsy silence in which the girls lay back on the
+grass incline, and solemnly munched chocolates with youth's delightful
+dissociation from anything more perplexing than the passing of the
+actual hour.
+
+"No!" murmured Annie Smith, breaking the drowsy spell.  "She's _not_
+like us--couldn't be with a V.C. father and India as a birthright.  But
+isn't it all _wonderfully_ mysterious?"
+
+Dear unsophisticated soul, whose _wanderlust_ was yearly arrested, or
+rather satisfied, with the summer holiday by the sea, and whose rector
+father acted as a weekly soporific to his congregation.
+
+"I wonder who gave her that perfectly _horrible_ charm?" she added
+sleepily.
+
+"The ayah, I _think_," came an equally sleepy answer.  "Did I tell you
+that I found it in the bath-room the other night?  It's an eye--a
+cat's-eye, you know--a perfect beast of a thing; I would swear it
+winked at me when I dropped it on the floor.  Anyway I left it there
+and simply _flew_ out of the room to tell Leonie, and Jessica pinched,
+I beg Principal's pardon, took my bath.  Ugh!  and she wears it night
+and day--oh! look, here she comes----"
+
+"Oh!" sighed plain Annie Smith, "isn't she _beautiful_!"
+
+She was!
+
+Unaware that anyone was watching, Leonie stopped in front of a bush of
+red roses.  She neither touched or sniffed them; she just flung out her
+arms, lifted her face to the blazing sun and laughed.
+
+The simple school frock showed the wonder of her figure, with the
+beautiful rounded bust, the slender waist, and the moulded limbs; the
+sun drew red and yellow lights out of the heavy russet hair, gold
+flecks out of the green eyes, and a flash of crimson from the rather
+full clear-cut mouth with its turned-up corners.
+
+Her skin was like ivory with the faintest tinge of pink just on the
+very tip of the rather pronounced cheek-bones; her hands were small and
+fine, and the fingers were like pea-pods, long and slender and slightly
+dimpled.
+
+And when she moved away towards the summer-house where she could see
+the sea, she moved not at all from her waist upwards.  She held her
+head and shoulders as though she had carried baskets of fruit or
+washing upon the crown of her pate since her youth; her glorious bosom
+was like a bed of lotus buds in the southern wind; she moved like a
+deer, or a snake, or a bacchanalian dancer, as you will; but in any
+case in a way which in the present tense caused the Principal to mourn
+in secret, and in the future brought the condemnation of women and the
+eyes of men full upon her.
+
+And behind the summer-house she leant against the wall.
+
+"One more term," she said, "only one more term, and then I shall be
+free--free to go--free to wander--free to follow the voice which is
+calling, calling!  Only one more little term!"
+
+And Fate, grinning, pinched that one more little term between her
+knotted old thumb and finger so that it was stillborn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  "And hath gone and served other gods."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Shriek upon shriek tore the peaceful stillness of the night, and in one
+second the sleeping house was transformed from a place of rest and
+quiet to the semblance of a disturbed rookery.
+
+Deathly silence followed the horrible screams of fear and the sound of
+the girls calling one to the other, during which mistresses extricated
+themselves from the encumbering bedclothes to rush on to their
+respective landings; elder girls peered in terror from their bedroom
+doors, and younger ones clung to each other or the bed-post, or the
+door-knob, anything in fact which would help to support their quaking
+little knees.
+
+Once again the terrible screams rent the air, whipping everyone out of
+the stunned apathy which great fear brings to some folk, just as the
+Principal came out on to her landing and looked up to the second storey.
+
+"Miss Primstinn," she called, and her voice showed no sign of the
+thudding of her heart.
+
+Pushed by one of those willing hands always so eager to thrust someone
+else to the forefront of the battle, Miss Primstinn, clutching her
+courage and a drab dressing-gown in both hands, half ran, half slipped
+down the stairs.
+
+"_We_ will investigate, Miss Primstinn, and the young ladies will
+retire to their rooms and shut the doors."
+
+In days long past the house had been well built after the excellent
+design of a wealthy old architect who had fled the place when
+Eastbourne had become a centre for girls' schools and summer trippers.
+
+The full moon flooded the hall round which ran the galleries belonging
+to the successive storeys, each crowded with girls in various designs
+of night attire who hung over the oak balustrades to watch developments.
+
+But they all leapt in unison, as though spurred into action by an
+electric shock, when a deep voice boomed from the shadows round a green
+baize door in the hall which led to the servants' quarters.
+
+Then a distinct sigh of relief whistled softly through the entire house
+when the electric lights suddenly blazed and the speaker was discovered
+to be cook.
+
+Cookie in an emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat _déclassé_
+bedjacket, a tight knot of hair playing bob-cherry with her kindly
+right blue eye, and a rolling-pin clutched truculently in her red right
+hand.
+
+Dear old Cookie who scolded and complained unceasingly, but who loved
+the entire school with a love which took the substantial form of
+delicious cakes, and buns, and jellies.
+
+"H'I've come to h'investigate, Mum!" she called up.  "Berglers or worse
+got into Miss Jessica's room through them dratted French windies, I'll
+be bound.  Now just you stay where you are, Mum, an' I'll go an' see,
+an' if I screams then come along.  And I think a policeman might come
+in handy, there may be one on the beat."
+
+She waddled away to another green door always left open o' nights, and
+which led to the wing reserved entirely for the girls of the Upper
+Sixth; and where each one revelled in her own dainty separate bedroom.
+
+"The young ladies will retire to their bedrooms and close their doors.
+Mademoiselle, I depend upon you!"  With one hand on the banisters and
+one foot poised for descent, the Principal pitted her will against
+overwhelming curiosity and won.
+
+Backing like a flock of sheep before the sheep-dog, they slowly retired
+and shut the doors, only to fling them wide open and rush to the
+balustrade in time to see the Principal, followed by Miss Primstinn,
+hurrying down the stairs to meet Cookie, who had run back into the hall
+shouting at the top of her voice.
+
+"Come along, Mum!  Quick!  Miss Jessica's dead and Miss Gertrude dying.
+And where's Miss Lee-onny--fetch her someone--it's 'er friend, little
+Miss Jessica, wots--wots----"
+
+The Principal, whose face looked suddenly livid and old, laid a hand on
+Cookie's shoulder.
+
+"Run and fetch the doctor, Cook, please, it will be quicker than the
+telephone!  I can trust you to keep your head.  Dr. Mumford is too far
+away, fetch the new one at the end of the road."
+
+"Please to send Brown, Mum, she's younger an' quicker at runnin' than
+me.  An' I think I can 'elp you, Mum," said Cookie quietly,
+unconsciously responding to the strength of her mistress's character.
+"An' I'd like to fetch Miss Lee-onny, Mum, she's that to be depended
+h'on an' clear'eaded."
+
+The Principal sighed under the sudden inrush of relief which had come
+to her at the mention of her favourite pupil.
+
+She loved Leonie with a love quite separate from her affection for all
+the young souls in her charge, and secretly admired the strength of
+will which more than once had been pitted against her own; moreover,
+accustomed to the quiet monotonous passage of time, she suddenly
+realised that she needed someone young and energetic in this emergency.
+
+And the girl she needed in her distress was kneeling on her bed with
+arms upraised above her head.
+
+The dying moon was slowly withdrawing her waning silvery light from the
+billowing mass of tawny hair, tumbling in lavender-scented masses
+around the girl; lingering for a moment on the eyes staring from under
+the unblinking eyelids, and for a second upon the glint of even teeth
+showing through the lips moving in prayer.
+
+And then she spoke, in the eerie tones of those who talk in their
+sleep; and the words were even those of India's most holy writ,
+sonorous and full of a surpassing dignity, rising and falling as she
+knelt motionless, her eyelids slowly closing upon the terrible staring
+eyes.
+
+"The sacrifice . . ." she chanted monotonously, "with voice, hearing,
+mind, I make oblation.  To this sacrifice . . . let the gods come well
+willing!"
+
+And as the moon sank to rest there was no sound save for a little sigh
+as Leonie, with closed eyes and white hands clasped upon her breast,
+stretched herself upon the bed, then with a violent movement sat up,
+and wide awake stared about the room.
+
+"Yes?" she whispered.  "Yes?"
+
+And her strange eyes, with pin-point pupils in a yellow green circle,
+seemed to follow something which crept slowly round the bare walls as
+far as the chintz window-curtain moving softly in the breeze of the
+coming dawn.  The room was full of shadows thrown by a creeper
+festooned outside the wide-open window; soft whisperings brought from
+the distant corners of the earth by the restless ocean filled the air,
+as she hastily twisted her hair into two great plaits with steady hands.
+
+Then she slipped quietly to the edge of the bed and searched with her
+bare feet for the crimson slippers; searched fearfully as though afraid
+of what they might touch whilst her eyes glanced this way and that
+through the shadowed room.
+
+"Who is calling me?" she whispered.  "Who wants me?"
+
+But there was no sound save for the whispering of the distant sea.
+
+She bent her head sideways as though to listen, rose to her feet, and
+standing back against the bed, looked down at the shadows which danced
+about the hem of her garment.  A swift furtive glance over her shoulder
+and her hand stole to the crimson kimono hanging on the brass rail,
+whilst a jewelled cat's-eye winked cunningly among the embroidery of
+her night-robe.
+
+"Come in," she said suddenly and sharply, "don't stand outside the
+door, come in."
+
+And when there came no answer she thrust her arms swiftly into the
+sleeves of the crimson kimono, and running across the room flung open
+the door, and finding the corridor empty passed hurriedly on, leaving
+the door wide so that the shadows skipped freakishly about the room in
+tune to the rhythmical whisperings which the sea bore from the distant
+corners of the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+  "Thy brother Death came, and cried,
+    'Wouldst thou me?'
+  And I replied,
+    'No, not thee!'"--_Shelley_.
+
+
+The electric lights gave out a kind of fictitious radiance against the
+dull grey of the hall windows through which the dawn was struggling.
+
+The place was packed with girls.  Some clustered near the baize door,
+standing nervously on tip-toe and with the intent of retiring
+precipitately if there should be any sign of the Principal; others hung
+over the stair or gallery banisters; the domestic staff stood round their
+own particular door, their white faces shining dully like Chinese
+lanterns; no one spoke or moved.  In fact they might have been posing for
+a photographer until those above suddenly swayed and bent this way and
+that, and those in the hall parted to give way to Leonie.
+
+Clad in crimson satin kimono, with feet thrust into crimson satin
+slippers and her hastily plaited hair hanging in two great ropes, she
+passed through them like a flame, emanating strength and resolve and a
+tremendous power of will.  Although she looked neither to the right nor
+left as she ran swiftly and disappeared into the wing where lay her
+little friend, there was something very pleasing in the way the girls put
+out their hands to touch her as she passed; and something distinctly
+encouraging in the whispered remarks that followed her, and which might
+be summarised in the "_Now_ it's all right," which under the high
+pressure of intense excitement almost burst from the lips of Annie Smith.
+
+Like an arrow she sped to the bed, unconsciously pushing aside the women
+who, almost frantic with fear and quite out of their bearings, were doing
+their best to grapple with the problem of life or death so suddenly
+placed before them.
+
+Kneeling, she turned the girl's livid little face towards her, vainly
+feeling for the pulse in the wrist and bruised neck; then sprang to her
+feet, faced the Principal and took the situation into her strong, capable
+young hands.
+
+"What happened?  And have you sent for the doctor?"
+
+Her usually sweet, clear voice was like the dull sound of a cracked
+earthenware pot when flipped by thumb and finger.
+
+"Yes, dear!" was the quick reply.  "The doctor will be here any
+moment--and hot bottles and blankets are being prepared.  Gertrude could
+not sleep and crept into Jessica's room to look for a German grammar for
+the examination to-morrow--to-day, and found Jessica in--in this--faint."
+
+And the elder woman suddenly laid a hand on the girl's arm and looked up
+at her with the confidence she always inspired.  "Help me, dear!" she
+whispered, with the dread of disgrace and an untimely ending to an
+honourable career in her old grey eyes.
+
+And Leonie smiled, answering with the superb confidence of youth, and a
+slight ray of hope pierced the suffocating fog of fear, and brought
+Cookie from the head of the bed where she had been standing in the shade
+of a screen.
+
+"Can I 'elp, Miss Lee-onny?"
+
+"Cookie, _dear_--you and Miss Primstinn, Miss Leanto and--yes, and
+Ellen--none of the girls--and quickly--there's not a moment to lose."
+
+"The doctor's coming, Mum," said a voice from the half-open door.
+
+"The doctor is coming, dear," repeated the Principal.
+
+Leonie answered with a strange authority in her words.
+
+"We will not wait for the doctor!"  She passed the tips of her fingers
+slowly across her forehead and down her cheek to the back of her neck, as
+was her habit when trying to solve some problem.  "No, we will not wait,
+because--because _I_ know!"
+
+Ten minutes later the door opened to let in a young man, who stood for a
+moment outlined against a sea of faces, and then turned and shut the door
+most decisively and locked it.
+
+"Who thought of that, I wonder," he said to himself, as he watched the
+four women kneeling round Jessica stretched out upon the floor.
+
+They were going through the movements used in resuscitating the drowned,
+and he, too, knelt at a nod by the side of the fat old woman in an
+emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat _déclassé_ bedjacket, who
+was breathing heavily through the unaccustomed exercise.
+
+"Let us be--a bit, Sir!" she panted.  "She don't some'ow feel--quite--as
+dead--like!  Give us a--a chance.  One--two--three--four.  It's
+the--reg'lar--as does--it.  Miss Lee--onny's orders--Sir--bless er----"
+
+She jerked her head in the direction of Leonie, and the doctor looked.
+
+Behind her friend's head she knelt, her plaited hair twining like snakes
+to the ground, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, and the fingers
+of both hands pressing the temples of the child upon the floor, whilst to
+and fro, lifeless, dull, swung the great cat's-eye from a gold chain
+about the neck.
+
+"Good God!" muttered the young doctor who, having travelled the world as
+ship's surgeon, knew that the scalpel and soda-cum-gentian do not
+constitute the whole of the art of healing.
+
+As he looked a great bead of perspiration dropped from Leonie's forehead,
+between the taut arms, on to her knees; and a sudden shiver shook her
+from head to foot, and he heaved his overcoat into a chair, and edged
+very quietly until he knelt between her and Cookie.
+
+"It's 'orrible, Sir!" the latter whispered, as she glanced at the pupil
+she loved most.
+
+And it was.
+
+By now the perspiration was pouring in streams from the girl's face,
+whilst the slim body shook and shook like a young tree in a storm; her
+teeth chattered like castanets, her closed eyes were sunk in purple black
+orbits, the cheeks were drawn and grey, and the nostrils were dilating
+like those of a far-spent horse.
+
+"For Gawd's sake stop 'er.  Sir--she's a-killing of 'erself."
+
+The doctor shook his head, took out a brandy flask and a metal box from a
+leather case beside him on the floor.  He held up the ready-filled glass
+syringe to the light and sent a squirt of what looked like water through
+the gleaming needle.
+
+"If the young lady shows signs of life I want you to get this brandy down
+her throat _at once_, and begin to massage her heart."
+
+"Massige! that's same as kneading dough, ain't it, Sir!"
+
+"That's it!  Miss--Miss--oh! Leonie will want the most attention, she is
+only just alive.  I will give her another two minutes, and if nothing has
+happened by then I'll stop her, though it'll be an awful risk!"
+
+"What's she a-doin' of, Sir?"
+
+"She's forcing her own life, her vitality into her friend; she's
+practically raising the dead!"
+
+"_Lor_, Sir!"
+
+He had just raised his hand to touch Leonie, praying to heaven for the
+girl's reason, when she suddenly flung back her head.
+
+Up through the house-top, to the stars, the heavens, rushed the terrible
+cry, wailing as wails the wolf who has lost its mate, insisting as
+insists one who has staked his all on one final throw, imploring as
+implores the mother in the last dire throes of childbirth.
+
+What the language was, what the words meant, to whom the prayer was
+addressed, no one knew.
+
+But at the third terrible appeal to God, or Fate, or Death, or Life, and
+even as those who listened outside and those who ceased their labours in
+the room stuffed their ears with their fingers and sobbed, little Jessica
+opened her eyes, and smiled just as Leonie, flinging up her arms, crashed
+face downwards on the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+  "The fix'd events of Fate's remote decrees."--_Pope_.
+
+
+Vultures drowsed in the shade thrown by the crumbling, sun-cracked,
+heat-stricken mud walls and houses which lined the meandering unpaved
+streets, or rather passages, of a certain village in northern India;
+crows were packed everywhere, taking no notice for the nonce of the
+feast of filth and garbage spread invitingly around them, and in which
+sprawled the disgusting, distorted bodies of somnolent water buffaloes;
+inside the houses hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids slept
+through the terrific heat of the noonday hours; in the distance the
+Himalayas, supreme and distressing, like a ridge across eternity, lay
+behind the turrets and minarets of the town which, thanks to the Indian
+atmosphere and the long distance, shone white, fretted, and--well,
+exactly as you can see it any day in paint at the Academy or in Bond
+Street.
+
+Perfectly motionless upon the high khaki-coloured wall, which entirely
+surrounds the village, with dust upon his aged feet and raiment and
+once white turban, oblivious of the heat, the flies, and everything
+that slept, sat a man with age written upon every gnarled joint, and in
+every crack and fissure of the parchment-like skin.
+
+_So_ old, and _yet_ with life, and hope, and youth eternal in the dark
+hawk eye which gazed unseeingly through the outer world straight
+towards the mountains.
+
+And the old body made no sign of life, even when the vultures without
+sound soared majestically heavenwards, whilst the crows rose in
+shrieking disordered squads, and a kite whistling melodiously swooped
+from nowhere downwards across his head to the filth of the streets.
+
+Neither did he turn his head or his eyes when a coal-black stallion,
+guided only by the pressure of its rider's knees, came to a stand
+directly beneath him in the shadow of the wall, having scrambled and
+slithered, jumping like a deer, climbing like a goat down the
+rock-strewn road which leads to the village from the great house at its
+rear; one of those abominable roads allotted to the calloused native
+foot, honoured for the first time in this instance by the passage of
+the prince's son and heir.
+
+An arresting picture the rider and his horse made as the man bent low
+in the saddle and salaamed, then raised his turbaned head and sat
+motionless, gazing at the holy man.
+
+Minutes passed before, with arms filled with offerings and garlands of
+marigolds and jasmin swinging from his wrists, he slid from the saddle
+to the ground, and took his way up the narrow tortuous path which Fate
+had marked out for him through all time.
+
+High caste, high born, as slender and delicate and as pressed with life
+as a budding branch in spring, Madhu Krishnaghar stood beside the
+priest in the incongruous setting of the mud walls.
+
+A coat of fine white linen with broad orange waistband came to just
+below the knees; white trousers fastened tight about the ankle fitted
+almost like a stocking from ankle to knee; the slender, narrow feet
+were shod in native slippers, the white turban with its regulation
+folds outlined the pale bronze face with the sign of the man's religion
+traced between the eyebrows; diamond solitaires sparkled in the ears,
+and one necklace of great pearls hung about his neck.
+
+"Usual large gentle eye, hawk nose, mobile mouth and small-boned oval
+face" would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of any
+occidental passer-by; "meet 'em everywhere, gambling at the street
+corner, or squatting in the bazaar, or riding elephants."
+
+Yes! but--is not India's future history writ large upon that
+small-boned oval face for those who, having the vision, read as they
+walk warily.
+
+For those who run hastily past life's signposts cannot and will not see
+that, like the fresh green grass which hides the dug pit, those gentle
+luminous eyes draw attention from the subtle cruelty of the mouth,
+through which gleam the pitiless perfect teeth.
+
+Glorying in his bull-neck and massive chin, and blinded by his insular,
+inherited upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the
+thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of
+the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through worship at the
+shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of
+movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root
+from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with
+its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind,
+causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled
+lips, and the young to envisage plague, pestilence, and famine with a
+mere lifting of the shoulder.  Patience! the card which India does not
+hold up her sleeve in the game of life she is playing; the
+dull-coloured drab little bit of cardboard which she throws on the
+table openly, but which we ignore amongst the highly coloured,
+bejewelled pictures she places before us, smiling with the tender
+luminous eyes so that we shall forget the subtle cruelty of the mouth.
+
+Placing his offerings at the holy man's feet, and laying the garlands
+gently about the bowed shoulders, Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of
+princes, stooped and lifting the hem of the dust-covered garment, laid
+it against his forehead, then quietly sat down a pace removed from the
+ancient who took no notice whatever of his proceedings.
+
+And time passed, linking one hour of noon to its neighbour and the
+next, until the hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids awoke to the
+freshness of the evening and the monotony of its tasks.
+
+Kites called, crows screamed, men gambled in the shadows of the evening
+and the upstanding, distorted, disgusting water buffalo; while the two
+men, master and pupil in the religion of death, sat hour after hour
+without movement, staring at the mountains, the dwelling-place of Siva
+the terrible, and the birthplace of Kali his bride.
+
+Far into the night they sat, until the last quarter of the moon had
+sunk to rest, when, with one single movement, the old man sprang to his
+feet, flung out his arms, and bent in utter humility and cast dust upon
+his once white turban.
+
+His voice was but a shrill cracked whisper when he called upon his god
+from the crumbling top of the sunbaked, moon-drenched wall, and
+turning, lifted his travel-stained mantle and laid it on the young
+shoulders beside him.
+
+An hour had passed, and more, before the holy man's tale, which ran
+back through the past seventeen years, was finished.  And when it had
+been told the high caste youth trembled in the ecstasy of his religion,
+amazed at the enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life,
+uplifted at the task before him.  Yea! he trembled in the ecstasy of
+his religion, forgetting that love and passion and life ran just as
+riotously in his supple perfect body.
+
+He leapt to his feet, smiting his forehead with clenched hand.
+
+"Give me a sign, O Kali!  Show me that thou art pleased!"
+
+And he rent his garments in joy, showing the bronze breast with the
+blood-red marks of his terrible religion traced upon it; then thrusting
+his fingers in his ears sank to the ground and buried his head between
+his knees.
+
+A black kid, the happiest of all good omens, bleating with hunger,
+tripped and stumbled from a courtyard; yet even as it found its mother
+and buried its little head in the warmth of the soft side, there had
+come across the plains a weird, long-drawn-out sound, fraught with
+disaster to those who believe in signs.
+
+Long and shrill it sounded and ceased; and once again--to be lost in
+peals of indecent, discordant laughter.
+
+Uncontrolled, uncontrollable, loathesome sound which tears India's
+nights to shreds.
+
+The jackals had found at dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+  "A continual dripping in a very rainy day
+  and a contentious woman are alike."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+In the late spring Leonie stood at a cottage window watching the rush
+of the incoming water as she listened to her aunt's ceaseless lament,
+idly wondering if both would reach high tide together, and if there
+would be any chance of slipping out for a swim before bedtime.
+
+She loved her aunt with the protective love of the very strong for the
+very weak, and smilingly found excuses for the daily tirade against
+fate, or ill-luck, or whatever it is weak people blame for the hopeless
+knots they tie in their own particular bit of string by their haphazard
+bursts of energy, or apathetic resignation to every little
+stumbling-block they find in their path.
+
+Daily, almost hourly, through the splendid North Devon winter the aunt
+had wailed, and bemoaned, and fretted, driving the girl out on the
+tramp for hours in the wind, and the wet, and the sun, only to return
+hurriedly at the thought of the weak, hapless, helpless woman in the
+cottage at Lee.
+
+Susan Hetth complained about everything, from the lack of society to
+the smallness of her income, plus a few scathing comments upon her
+niece's weather-browned face and the hopeless outlook for her
+matrimonial future.
+
+Her own bid in the matrimonial market _en secondes noces_ had failed,
+and though Hope had not taken it lying down, the passage of the years
+had not been lightened by what seemed to be a daily addition of silver
+threads to the jaded ash gold of her hair, and the necessity of a still
+more flagrant distribution upon her face of the substances she employed
+to camouflage the passage of old Time.
+
+Ah, me! that moment before the stimulating advent of the early cup of
+tea, when divested of our motley we see ourselves in the mirror as,
+thanks be, others do not, and laying eager hands upon that offspring of
+charity, the boudoir cap, wonder if it has been in hobnailed boots that
+the old Father has tramped across our face during the night hours,
+dragging his scythe behind him.
+
+Leonie's school-days had ended abruptly.
+
+Nothing definite had or could have been said, but it was not likely
+that the parents would see exactly eye to eye with their daughters, who
+wrote reams and whispered volumes of the delightful mystery which
+surrounded the girl who next term would be head of the school.
+
+Long and excited had been the conclaves with the Principal, persuasive
+or threatening the arguments used, according to the parental
+temperament, and the upshot of it all was that Leonie had been asked to
+go; and proud, hurt Leonie had left, with a valiant smile on her lovely
+mouth, and a strange little questioning look that had only quite lately
+crept into the beautiful eyes, and which neither the outpourings of
+Jessica's love, a demonstration of affection from the entire school in
+the shape of numerous and weird presents, or the broken-hearted kiss of
+both the Principal and Cookie had been able to eradicate.
+
+The girl felt that she had left under a cloud, which a slight attack of
+what the doctor had diagnosed as brain fever had not served to line
+with silver.
+
+He had insisted upon complete change and rest, and had called twice a
+day when Leonie was really ill, and four times when she was
+convalescent; so upon fair Devon had they decided, Leonie cajoling and
+smiling until she had obtained a year's lease, at an absurdly low rent,
+of the little cottage on the left of Lee harbour as you face the sea.
+
+It is a place of charm if you are willing to do most of the work
+yourself with the aid of a daily help.
+
+It is certainly rather like a band-box with the lid on, and the ocean
+at high tide is only prevented by the harbour wall from invading your
+front garden, which is the size of a handkerchief.
+
+But if you sit at the window you can feel the spray on your face, and
+if you lie a-bed the tang of the air sweeping across the Atlantic will
+get you out at the double; and the smell of the pines, and the hum of
+the bees in summer, and the rush of the storm, and the crash of the
+waves in winter, are of God's own fashioning.
+
+What with shopping expeditions to that crime in brick and mortar called
+Ilfracombe, visits here and visits there, croquet, bridge, and picnics,
+the summer and early autumn months had not dragged unduly for Susan
+Hetth.
+
+But when the last visitor had gone, and the first real storm had broken
+a window, then she had sunk like a lump of lead in a bucket of cold
+water out of which she refused to be lifted.
+
+Leonie was youth incarnate, causing even the courteous folk of Devon to
+turn and stare as she swung past with a cheery greeting in a skirt and
+hob-nailed boots ending at her knees.
+
+For the first month, as one always does in Devon, she had walked
+herself to the verge of scragginess, then had gradually put on weight,
+as is the correct method.  Her whistle could be heard in the woods and
+fields, and on the beach from Lee to Hartland way; all the country folk
+loved her, and scolded her for the risks she took in swimming, and she
+seemingly had no care in the world.
+
+But the great heat of summer, the shriek of the wind, and the scream of
+the birds in autumn would bring a little pucker between her brows; the
+storm would drive her spirits up to breaking point, the calm would
+leave her eyes full of trouble; in the woods she would stop and turn to
+listen, then frown and trudge along between the trees.
+
+She was not at rest, for an unconfessed fear, a spook without name or
+shape, was plucking at her will-power and her heart, a phantom of which
+she would rather have died than have said one word.
+
+So she stood twisting the blind cord and watching the rocks as they
+gradually disappeared under the swirling waters.
+
+Susan Hetth sat near the fire, which is oft-times necessary in the
+spring at Lee, and tapped in irritation, and most irritatingly, with
+her foot against the low fender.
+
+She was worried.
+
+She was not by birth or heredity a bad-tempered woman, merely one of
+straw, who after the first two months of every quarter invariably found
+herself in a corner which one injudicious move might render
+uncomfortably tight.
+
+Her financial situation, in fact, had become so critical, and the bank
+manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more
+than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of
+the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the
+Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to
+harbour paying guests in the no-man's-land of Earls Court.
+
+Then Fate crossed her knees, and out of her lap had tumbled a widower
+possessed of a substantial banking account and four children.
+
+A few more days, a little more encouragement, and he would most
+certainly have offered her his name and the half of his worldly goods
+in return for her help in quelling the riotous behaviour of his
+motherless brood.
+
+But there had supervened the crisis at school.
+
+And grasping for once in her life the necessity of immediate action if
+she wished to prevent an embellished account of her niece's untoward
+behaviour from reaching the man's ears, she had fled to Devon, leaving
+behind a trail of dainty scented notes explaining that it was all on
+account of a slight nervous breakdown from overstudy on the part of her
+niece "who," she added casually, "as I think I told you, is the only
+daughter of my dear brother, Colonel Hetth, V.C."
+
+Snobbish, but quite effective as bait for a person who has not complete
+control over the eighth letter of the alphabet.
+
+That very morning, quite unheedful of the beauties of the little witch
+village, she had gone to collect her mail lying at the post office,
+which in summer is almost hidden in its garden of flowers; and amongst
+an assortment of spring sale catalogues from emporiums, mostly situated
+in South Kensington, had found a letter from the widower, begging to be
+allowed to come down for a change of air, and an opportunity of laying
+a proposition before her.
+
+She had wandered up the side of the hill, unmindful of the birds and
+buds almost bursting with the intoxication of spring; had pitched the
+catalogues anywhere on the grass, as is the wont of the untidy who have
+no bond with nature, and had tried to solve the problem as she scraped
+the mud, with the aid of a twig, from her Louis-Quinze heels.
+
+But she was harassed, poor, hapless creature, for more than one reason.
+
+The words of alarm from the nurse, the innuendoes from departing
+maid-servants, and the direct warning from the old specialist which had
+long since faded from her mind, had been forcibly revived by the
+happenings at the school; and being one of those who invariably plump
+for the worst, and without giving the slightest thought to the
+criminality of the proceeding, she had definitely decided, if she could
+coerce the girl into falling in with her plans, to marry her to the
+highest bidder before worse could happen.
+
+But she was downright afraid of her niece.  Afraid of her moral
+strength which dominated everything and everybody; ill at ease with the
+straightforward way she had of speaking her mind on occasions, and
+following up her speech with action.  Never an untruth had she known to
+pass the girl's lips, not once had she heard her say one belittling
+thing about a living soul, and only twice had she seen the sweetness
+and gentleness swept with anger.
+
+Cruelty to anything small or weak could transform the girl into a flame
+of wrath, and her weakest spot was her overpowering sympathy with
+anyone in distress, without any inquiries into the direct cause of the
+adversity, which spot caused her to be considerably taken in by many of
+those who had discerned it.
+
+An almost abnormal moral strength, allied to great gentleness and pity,
+combined to make a character extraordinary in one so young, and which
+her aunt summed up and summarily dismissed from her mind in the trite
+sentence that "she certainly did not take after her parents."
+
+She was considered slow by the youths, and perplexing and therefore to
+be avoided by the girls of her own age, and dull or frightfully
+conceited by the men who had fluttered round her almost exotic beauty
+until they had come up against the icy barrier of her supreme
+indifference.
+
+To those who knew her intimately, such as the fisherfolk and the
+farmers, and the tramps with whom she would sit and converse by the
+wayside and share her lunch, she was the most lovable, cheery soul in
+the world, which, of course, meant the county of Devon.
+
+"Damn standoffish, what!"
+
+Such had been the verdict passed by someone married who hailed from
+London town, when Leonie had refused to sit out a dance in a secluded
+shady nook.
+
+"Just a bit of heaven!" had said the tramp as he turned the corner in
+the lane, leaving Leonie sitting on the milestone pondering upon the
+man whose ragged clothes were out of keeping with the shape of his
+nails, and the timbre of his voice with his unkempt hair.
+
+But leaving all that aside, and in all conscience it was bad enough,
+the biggest worry hung as heavy and as threatening upon the horizon as
+does at times the monsoon over the Indian Ocean.
+
+Once upon a time Susan Hetth had committed an indiscretion, nothing
+_really_ wrong--she hadn't the nerve.  But the nuisance of it was,
+that, in addition to the indiscretion, she had broken the eleventh
+commandment and had very nearly got hanged for her lamb.
+
+In the second year of her widowhood in the month of November, whilst
+her hair was still golden and her colouring unpurchased, she had dined
+_à deux_ in one of those delectable, ghost-ridden, low-ceilinged sets
+of chambers which are tucked away in a certain Inn within the Fleet
+Street boundary.
+
+Which is a silly thing to do if you do not own a car and a
+long-suffering discreet chauffeur.
+
+The _diner à deux_ and a bit of a play had been the honest programme;
+but the inevitable had happened in an all-enveloping blanket of a fog,
+on account of which everything in the shape of a hackney carriage had
+gone home, and an excursion on foot to the nearest tube rendered
+hopeless by the simple fact that you could not see your hand before
+your face.
+
+Which would not have mattered a bit if only, as the fog lifted and the
+clock of St Dunstan's chimed the hour of three a.m., she had emerged
+from the narrow opening into Fleet Street with the aplomb or
+_savoir-faire_, which are almost twins, necessary to the occasion.
+
+She would then have beckoned to and smiled sweetly upon the young
+ruffian into whom she bumped as he lounged on his way to Covent Garden
+Market, and promised him just enough to bring her a taxi or something
+on wheels, into which she would have got if it had materialised, and
+been whirled away to safety and bed after adieux to her host uttered
+with the nonchalance necessary to allay the young ruffian's suspicions.
+
+Instead of this she had slunk from the opening with her host close
+behind, had bumped into the young ruffian and with an exclamation of
+dismay had shrunk back into the shadows and her host's arms.
+
+In consequence of which action the bare-footed ruffian had shadowed
+them until they had met a four-wheeler, had held the lady's dress from
+the wheel and overheard the address given to the driver for which he
+had received tuppence, and had disappeared into a doorway where he had
+spat on his unearned increment and made his plans.
+
+The upshot of it all being the admittance a fortnight later of young
+Wal. Hickle, attired in his best and primed with her family history,
+into the presence of the terrified woman.
+
+He had simply asked for twenty pounds on the nail in return for his
+silence.
+
+And she, scared out of her wits, instead of threatening him with the
+law, had given him a cheque--yes! a cheque--and he, with a flash of
+that cunning which was to lead him eventually to a seat amongst the
+plutocrats, had pocketed it and grinned.
+
+"I doan' wan' mor' 'en twenty uv the best, lidy, jus' to mike a
+start--an' I doan' wanter part wiv yer 'and-writin' niver.  So jes' yer
+send two rustlers, wot means notes, of ten pun each, rigistered, to W.
+'ickle spelt wiv a haitch, 2 H'apple Blossom Row, Coving Gardin, afore
+this toime ter-morrer.  An' jes yer remember that h'as long as yer
+lives I've got yer bit of 'andwritin.'  I ain't goin' ter use it, but
+some dye it might come in 'andy.  'Ardly loikly as 'ow yer'd buy twenty
+pun wurf of veg from Wal 'ickle eh, lidy?--it 'ud want _some_
+h'explanation."
+
+Then this soul made in the image and likeness of his God and found
+good, but hidden under the civilising process of the twentieth century
+which had given him the morals of a jackal and the status of a pariah
+dog, sighed as he looked round the dainty room.
+
+"S'welp me," he said, as he touched a satin cushion with his coarse,
+broken-nailed finger-tips, "h'if oi h'understand wye a woman the loikes
+uv _you_, wiv h'everyfink she wants, cawn't run _strite_!"
+
+"Oh! but," whimpered the woman, "it was all the fault of the fog,
+_really_ it was!"
+
+"Garn!" replied the young ruffian as he opened the door and slammed it
+behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+  "Surely I am more brutish than any man!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+And just about midsummer Fate tweaked the string to which was hobbled
+Susan Hetth.
+
+A vulgar but resplendent bachelor middle-aged millionaire, sterling,
+not dollars, in order to set his gastronomic house in order, had taken
+a notion for the simple life for just as long as the notion should
+last, and a perfect bijou of a thatched cottage t'other side of
+Clovelly for a year.
+
+With a notion of buying the cottage at Lee in which had dwelt the three
+historic maids, he had swept one day through the village in the latest
+thing in cars.
+
+Baulked in his intent, and with time upon his podgy hands, he had
+rolled, minus the car, along the village path over the strippet of
+water and the sunbaked grass to the harbour.
+
+There he had bent, with ardour and misgivings, to pick up Leonie's
+towel, just as the soft wind caught her bathing cloak as she stretched
+out her hand with a smile of thanks.
+
+She had grabbed at the cloak and missed it by a bit, so that it had
+swept behind her, hanging from one shoulder like some Grecian drapery,
+and the rotund little man had trotted round her draped side, picked up
+the cloak by the big button, and completed his trot, covering her up as
+he moved.
+
+And as he trotted his little porcine eyes had glistened as they
+lingered upon the perfect figure, from the slim ankles to the confused
+face, and Leonie had blushed, though you could not have discerned it
+through the tan, pulled the cloak tighter and hurried across the road
+to the cottage gate.
+
+But with the clumsy swiftness of the elephantine, the man had run after
+her and opened the cottage gate just as Susan Hetth opened the cottage
+door with the welcoming announcement that tea was ready.
+
+"Ha!" he had snorted as he almost ran up the path, leaving Leonie to
+stand still and stare in amazement at the little scene.  "And I'll have
+some tea, too, Lady Susan Hetth, and how d'you do.  Long time since we
+met, eh?"
+
+Diamonds sparkled in the sun as the man stretched out an effusive hand,
+and a flame of anger sparkled in the small eyes as Lady Susan drew back
+frigidly.
+
+Not being of them herself she set all the greater store on knowing
+those she considered exactly the right people.
+
+"I don't think I have----" she commenced in her most primpsy voice,
+when she was interrupted with a perfectly odious familiarity.
+
+"Now you're not going to say that you don't remember our little
+meetings in Earls Court _and_ Fleet Street and"--the man spoke with an
+extreme slowness as though keeping guard over each letter of each
+word--"_and_ our little correspondence, come now."
+
+Leonie frowned and moved a step forward protectingly as her aunt caught
+suddenly at the door handle, and then jerked herself forward with
+outstretched hand.
+
+"Auntie, dear----"
+
+But her aunt was speaking in the falsetto of forced levity, and Leonie
+held her peace and waited for an opportunity to slip past and into the
+house.
+
+"Why, I do believe," said Susan Hetth, suddenly metamorphosed by a
+certain tone in the man's voice into the terrified woman of years ago,
+"Yes!  I do believe it is Mr. Walter Hickle----"
+
+"_Sir_ Walter, _if_ you please."
+
+"Indeed, in-deed--how _very_ delightful, and after _all_ these years!
+Leonie, this is--is--er----"
+
+"I'm one of your aunt's friends, Miss Leonie, bobbed up out of the
+past.  Glad to meet you, hope we shall be friends, too."
+
+Leonie, who had gained the door, looked back over her aunt's shoulder
+and spoke with a gentle courtesy very much her own.
+
+"I always like to meet Auntie's friends!"
+
+Not knowing the man from Adam she spoke no untruth, but in spite of
+reiterated calls to come down to tea she remained in her bedroom until
+the loud-voiced guest had taken his departure.
+
+While the two women were having yet another cup of tea Sir Walter
+Hickle, millionaire, tradesman, and knight, sat down gingerly upon a
+rock and made his plans.
+
+He had made his plans as a bull-necked, offensive youth the first day
+he had pulled out from Covent Garden with a barrow piled with walnuts
+bought out of two rustlers, value of ten pun each.
+
+"I'll _get there_!" he had informed the nuts as he tweaked his cap over
+one eye, and his red neckerchief into place; and had sworn a mighty and
+quite unprintable oath as he struck a huge fist into a horny palm at
+the corner of Ludgate Circus and New Bridge Street.
+
+"I'll _get there_!" he informed the seaweed as he lifted the soft grey
+hat from his bald head and adjusted the enormous pearl pin in the pale
+pink satin tie; and he sighed stertorously as he complacently patted
+his knee with a podgy hand, upon the manicured plebeian fingers of
+which shone two magnificent diamond rings.
+
+And if you cannot penetrate the strongholds of Devon county, it is not
+difficult to make acquaintance with her visitors, especially if your
+visiting card is a gilt edge security for future excursions and
+diversions done in top-hole style.
+
+Unsuspecting Leonie, who never kept a grudge, after a week or so of
+astonishment and aversion, thinking in her innocence of heart that she
+perceived the trend of events, made up her mind to meet the rotund old
+knight with the simple graciousness due to her aunt's would-be husband.
+
+True, the elasticity of her graciousness did not stretch enough to
+allow her to accept the never-ending invitations which poured into the
+cottage; but she would tuck her remonstrating aunt into the car which
+was ever at the gate, and smile delightfully upon the infatuated old
+fellow who put her aloofness down to mere girlish waywardness.
+
+Although the corporeal part of the old vulgarian grated on her
+susceptibilities, she was quite willing to believe that if one chose to
+dig deep enough it would prove to be only the rough earth covering a
+positive mine of rare temperamental gems; and in her blindness whistled
+cheerily as she thought of the joy her aunt would feel at not having to
+drop her title when she changed her name, and at being able to retain
+the same initials for her monogram.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+  "To sell a bargain well is as cunning
+  as fast and loose."--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+"Now I want you to listen to me, Leonie!"
+
+"I am, Auntie!"
+
+"I mean _seriously_!  I want to talk about myself for one thing, and
+our very straitened means, which do not permit us to go on living even
+like this; and oh! lots of other things."
+
+"Right, darling!" said her niece, moving across the room to sit on a
+broad stool at her relation's feet, but twisting her head to one side
+with a quick movement when her aunt laid her hand dramatically upon the
+tawny hair.
+
+"Please, Auntie, don't!  I can't bear to have my head touched!"
+
+"Just what I want to talk about!" vaguely said Susan Hetth as she tried
+to disentangle an old-fashioned ring which had unfortunately caught a
+few shining hairs in its loose setting.
+
+"Please don't touch my _head_, Auntie!" repeated Leonie as she sat
+back.  "Let my hair _go_, please!"
+
+"I'm not touching your hair, child," impatiently replied the elder
+woman.  "It's got caught in one of my rings!"
+
+Leonie's eyes were almost closed in a strange kind of psychological
+agony; then just as though she acted unconsciously she seized her
+aunt's hands and pulled them quickly from her head, tearing out the
+hair entangled in the ring by the roots.
+
+"I can't stand it, Auntie.  I have never been able to bear anyone
+touching my head," she said very quietly.
+
+"I think you're insane at times, Leonie, _really_ I do!"
+
+The terrible words were out, and for one long moment the two women
+stared into each other's eyes.
+
+"You think I am insane at times," whispered Leonie.  "_You_--Auntie,
+_you_ think I am _insane_!"
+
+And the elder woman, floundering in dismay at the awful effect of her
+unconsidered words, sank to her neck in a bog of explanation.
+
+"No!  Leonie--no, of course not--I wasn't thinking--of _course_ you're
+not mad--insane I mean.  What an idea! only I am worried about you, you
+know that, don't you, dear!  _Do_ be sensible, dear.  Of course your
+brain is not _quite_ normal.  It can't be with all that sleep-walking,
+can it, and all your abnormally brilliant exams!"
+
+Susan Hetth's disjointed remarks sounded like the clatter of a pair of
+runaway mules, while Leonie clasped her hands tight as she sat crouched
+on her stool.
+
+"Of course people _will_ talk, you know, dear!  They did when you were
+quite a baby and began walking in your sleep.  And they did, you know,
+at school after that unfortunate child nearly got strangled by her
+sheets--I always do think that school fare is _most_ indigestible--and
+_so_ likely to cause blemishes on the skin!"
+
+Leonie bowed her head.
+
+"Most unfortunate that you should have snubbed young
+Mr--what's-his-name--so severely--and that his sister should have been
+at school with you.  Out of revenge _she_ has been talking about you
+and your sleep-walking.  People are most unkind and _most_ unjust--and
+you are _far_ too pretty to receive any consideration from your _own_
+sex, how_ever_ much attention you may receive from the opposition--I
+mean sex--opposite sex, I mean----"
+
+Leonie sat absolutely still.
+
+"Anyway, my child, we need not worry--there is a way out of our little
+difficulties."
+
+Sensing that something was coming Leonie sat back with the light of the
+oil lamp full on her face as she stared at the clutter on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+"I _do_ so want you to do something for me, darling."
+
+The tone of Susan Hetth's voice and the touch of her hand on the girl's
+arm were as wheedling as if she were about to ask her to tramp into
+Ilfracombe on some trifling midnight errand.
+
+Leonie answered quite mechanically.
+
+"What is it, dear!" she said.  "Say the word and I'll do it!"
+
+"Is that a promise?"
+
+"Ra-ther!  Anything to please you, Auntiekins!"
+
+Susan Hetth took her fence in a rush!
+
+"I want you to get married," she said abruptly out of pure fright, and
+wrenched at her bead chain when Leonie leapt to her feet.
+
+The girl stood quite still, outlined in her simple low-cut,
+short-sleeved dress by the wall, her hands pressed back against it.
+
+There was no sound except the soft gurgle and murmur of the water until
+she spoke, quietly, but with a world of horror in her low-pitched voice.
+
+"You want me to marry--_you_--when a moment ago you said that you
+thought I was mad--you want me to marry some honest, unsuspecting man,
+and bear him children!"
+
+Susan Hetth, shocked to the limit of her Pecksniffian soul, made a
+nerveless fluttering gesture of protest with her hands.
+
+"Don't speak," said Leonie quickly, "please don't speak until I have
+done.  Marriage!  I will tell you what I have thought about it while I
+have been waiting for my mate."
+
+"Oh!" exploded Susan Hetth vehemently.  "_My dear_!  Surely you have
+not been corresponding with anyone!"
+
+Leonie hesitated.
+
+How was she to make her aunt, this shallow, unbalanced being,
+understand the joyous expectancy with which she had awaited the moment
+when she should meet the man born for her?
+
+How was she to take the exquisite longings, the veiled desires, the
+beautiful virgin thoughts, from her heart and lay them before this
+woman who had taught her nothing but the twenty-third Psalm without its
+real interpretation, plus the correct Sunday collect and daily prayers.
+
+How explain that to her the little golden ring would not represent a
+key opening the door to the so-called freedom from which fifty per cent
+of women descend, via the shallow flight of steps marked a good time,
+to the plain of discontent; or that to her the word love was
+sufficient, in that for her it included those of honour and obey,
+without any separate declaration in public.
+
+When she spoke she spoke hurriedly, flushing from chin to brow.
+
+"Auntie--I correspond with no man--but my--my mate is waiting for me
+somewhere--calling me all the time ever since--oh! ever since I can
+remember--and--and I should have married him when I had met him
+if--if----"
+
+In anger at this fresh complication, piled upon her appalling want of
+tact of a few moments ago, Susan Hetth struck her hands on the arms of
+her chair.
+
+"I think you absolutely _indecent_, Leonie, to go on like this about
+someone you have never even seen.  Now listen to me, and don't be so
+theatrical.  I have had an offer of marriage for you by someone who
+knows all about you, and who, after my assurance that there is nothing
+hereditary in your family on either side to account for the strangeness
+of your actions at times, is perfectly willing, even anxious, to marry
+you."
+
+"To take the risk, you mean," broke in Leonie.  "Oh!--well, go on."
+
+Aunt Susan, somewhat out of breath from the rapidity and unaccustomed
+lucidity of her words, inhaled deeply and continued.
+
+"He will make you an astounding marriage settlement, give you
+everything you want, and swears to make you per-fect-ly happy!"
+
+"And his name?"
+
+"Oh! don't be stupid, Leonie, of course you know whom I mean!"
+
+Leonie leant forward, stretching out her hands, her face dead white in
+the light of the lamp.
+
+"Tell me _his name_ and don't drive me beyond breaking point, Aunt
+Susan!"
+
+"Tosh!" contemptuously remarked her aunt.  "Don't be so childish--I
+mean Sir Walter Hickle, of course!"
+
+Expecting some violent words of protest the elder woman half rose from
+her chair, but appalled by the deathly silence and the look on the
+girl's face, sank back, cowering in her seat, and stared in the
+direction her niece's hand was pointing.
+
+"Look, Auntie, look!"
+
+Leonie stood with one hand pointing at the mantelpiece and the other
+pressed against her throat as she tried to speak coherently.
+
+The pupils of her eyes were pin-points as she gazed at a wooden frame
+which, adorned with edelweiss and the Lucerne Lion, held the snapshot
+of a complaisant individual leaning over the harbour wall, attired in a
+well-fitting but ill-placed yachting suit.
+
+"Old Pickled Walnuts!  You want me to marry him--when--when--oh! when I
+thought _he_ wanted to marry _you_!"
+
+She laughed, a laugh which sounded like the jangling of broken glass,
+and died almost before it was born; and her aunt, terrified at the
+sound and the expression on the girl's face, seized the outstretched
+arm and shook it violently.
+
+"What _are_ you talking about, Leonie!"
+
+Leonie freed her arm with a shudder.
+
+"Please don't touch me!"  Then making a desperate effort she continued
+quietly, so quietly indeed that Susan Hetth looked anxiously over her
+shoulder towards the door.
+
+"Don't you know that's his nickname?  Oh! of _course_ you do!  You
+_know_ he made his fortune by pickling walnuts too rotten to sell.  Sir
+Walter Hickle--twist the name a bit and it's all in a nutshell--a--a
+pickled walnut shell"--the little unnatural laugh broke across the
+words--"and you want _me_ to marry him--Auntie!  Auntie! he's awful
+enough, heaven knows, but not bad enough, nobody could be, to have a--a
+mad wife foisted on him--no! never--I'll go out and work!"
+
+There was something very decisive in the last words, but Susan Hetth,
+like most weak people, found her strength suddenly in a mulish
+obstinacy, which is a quite good equivalent for, and often more
+efficacious than mere strength of will.
+
+This obstinacy, backed by the knowledge that people were beginning to
+gossip about the girl's aloofness and love of solitude; that the
+cashing of another cheque would see her overdrawn at the bank; and that
+until the girl was settled and off her hands she would not be able to
+solve her own matrimonial problem, drove her to a show of mental energy
+of which she would not have been capable in an everyday argument.
+
+"Work!" she cried, "work!  What can you do?  _Nothing_--except go out
+as a companion or nursery governess!--and who would take you without a
+reference--and who would give _you_ one?  Tell me!"
+
+Leonie remained silent--stunned.
+
+"As I have told you, we simply cannot afford to live even like _this_!
+I'm overdrawn as it is, and----"
+
+"But," broke in Leonie with a gleam of hope, "but I have father's money
+coming to me.  I'm not quite sure how much it is, but you can have
+it--_all_!"
+
+"It's two thousand pounds down for yourself, and two hundred and fifty
+a year in trust for your children--to be given you on your _wedding_
+day."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+It was just a little pitiful exclamation as the girl realised the net
+which was closing about her feet, but from the meshes of which she made
+a last desperate effort to extricate herself.
+
+"I think I--see--a way," she said slowly.  "Yes--listen--this terrible
+mystery that surrounds me, this--this curse which seems to bring
+disaster or pain to everyone I love, simply makes life not worth
+living--so if--if I make a will in your favour, Auntie, dear, and go
+for a swim at Morte Point where the cross currents are--it will----"
+
+But Susan Hetth interrupted violently, horror-stricken at the
+suggestion made indifferently by the girl she loved as far as she was
+capable of loving.
+
+"How is suicide going to help?" she demanded shrilly.  "There would be
+an inquest, every bit of gossip, everything you had ever done would be
+brought to light; the verdict would be insanity----"
+
+"Oh, _Auntie_!"
+
+Driven to desperation and without finesse Susan Hetth flung down her
+trump card.
+
+"But--I--I haven't told you the--the _worst_," she stammered, dabbing
+her eyes with her handkerchief, and peering from behind it at Leonie
+who, wearily pushing the hair off her forehead, stood apathetically
+waiting.
+
+"That--that man"--she jerked her head at the mantelpiece--"has--has a
+hold on me!"
+
+"What---do you mean Sir Walter--do you owe him _money_?" Leonie stared
+in amazement as she spoke.
+
+"Oh, no--it's worse!" came the reply, followed by a curtailed but
+sufficiently dramatic recital of the past indiscretion, to which Leonie
+listened spellbound.
+
+"And you _do_ believe that it was just a bit of bad luck, and that
+there was nothing _really_ wrong in it all, don't you, dear," insisted
+the woman who, like ninety-nine per cent of humans, forgot the real
+tragedy of the moment in the recital of her own pettifogging escapade.
+
+"Absolutely," replied Leonie flatly.
+
+"And you _do_ see the necessity of giving in, now that he has
+threatened me with exposure if you refuse him when he proposes, _don't_
+you, dear?"
+
+"Absolutely," replied Leonie for the second time.
+
+There followed long minutes of silence which the swirl of the waters
+alone dared to break, and then the girl spoke.
+
+"My life," she said very softly to herself; "my lovely, beautiful free
+life done.  The wind, and the birds, and the sea--Auntie--oh,
+Auntie--_Auntie_!"
+
+And she turned and flung herself against the wall with her face crushed
+into her upstretched arms.  "Think of it," she whispered hoarsely,
+"think of it, my youth, my spirit, my body given into that old man's
+keeping.  I who have kept my thoughts, my lips, my eyes for my mate
+that was to be; I who have longed for his love, for the hours and the
+days, and the months, and the years, even unto death, with him.  How
+could----"
+
+There was a click of the gate, and she flung round from the wall,
+dry-eyed, dry-lipped, desperate, as her aunt hurriedly rose.
+
+"It's him--Sir Walter, Leonie--are you going to accept him?"
+
+"Of course," came the steady reply, and Leonie looked the elder woman
+straight in the eyes, which darted this, that, and every way.   "Will
+you go upstairs, please."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Just before dawn Leonie slid in through the window, and the water,
+trickling from the bathing dress which clung to the wonderful figure,
+formed little pools on the faded carpet.
+
+"Nothing will ever make me clean," she whispered,
+"nothing--nothing--nothing.  There is no ocean big or wide or deep
+enough for that, oh! God--my God!"
+
+For five long minutes she stood absolutely still, looking straight and
+unseeingly at the mantelpiece.
+
+Then as a rooster somewhere shrilly heralded the coming day she awoke
+to her surroundings and moved.
+
+Like a beaten dog she crept to her bedroom, and stood staring at the
+reflection of her haggard face in the mirror.  A bird suddenly burst
+into a song of welcome to the dawn which was dyeing the sky rose pink,
+and she crossed to the window-seat, dropped to her knees, and buried
+her lovely head in her outstretched arms, amid the ruins of her
+beautiful Castle of Dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+  "For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain!"--_Pope_.
+
+
+When _empty_ Rockham is a haven of delight, whether the little
+connecting coves be awash with the tide, or the limpets, in an unglued
+state, are airing themselves awaiting the return of the water.
+
+You can wander at will, if you have the right boots on, over the
+never-ending sharp ridges of the rocks; you can pass hours gathering
+_laver_, though it is not at its best just there; and you can find
+sea-anemones and such treasure-trove as pit props, and boxes of butter,
+yea! and even casks of wine after a storm if the gods be kind to you.
+
+Also you can don your bathing dress in comfort behind the wreck, one of
+many, which has remained as witness to the force of the terrific gales
+and the ripping propensities of the saw-teethed rocks.
+
+Walk in from Lee or Mortehoe, Woolacombe or Croyde, over fields in
+which lambs stand on their front feet in exuberance of youth, or caper
+on their back ones until called to order by their maternal parent; or
+through lanes lined with primroses and violets, or roses, or nuts, or
+berries, according to the season, whilst on the top twig of the high
+hedges yellow-hammers, chaffinches, robins and the like gossip to you
+about the hawk hovering in the distance.
+
+Arrived there, pause on the edge of the incline.  _Don't_ go down if
+you see a paper bag fluttering in the breeze, because a paper bag is
+but a forerunner of lanky locks dripping on a towel-covered shoulder,
+and bare and uncomely feet fiddling in the warm sand, whilst adjacent
+is the rock over which the faded blue bathing dress hangs out to dry.
+
+Wait for the empty hour and then fly into the second cove, and the
+next, and the next, but--_don't forget the tide_!
+
+The sand-covered rough-haired terrier stood with his head cocked on one
+side, looking at the wonderful, waving, glistening mass in front of him.
+
+It certainly looked like seaweed, but it didn't smell like it, and long
+bits of it floated in the air just like golden threads; besides, there
+was something uncanny about it which sent thrills into the roots of his
+rough hair, causing it to rise in clumps along his spine.
+
+It looked as if there were something dead underneath, too, and yet it
+didn't; anyway it certainly did not look as though it were meant to be
+played with or barked at; and he hastened back along the treacherous
+narrow passage, which connects the two last coves, in search of
+him-who-knew-all and was never afraid.
+
+"No, old fellow!" was the only response he got to his invitation to
+"come and see."  "I've already been fooled over anemones, and rooks,
+and passing cloud shadows, and very dead starfish--nothing' doin', so
+calm yourself!"
+
+But the dog backed into a pool, emitting barks which were strangled at
+birth, snapped at a bit of rock which caught him unawares upon his
+unprotected flank, trotted forward, backed again into the pool, and
+turning, ran down the passage, came back and did it all over again.
+
+Talk about water-drops wearing away a stone, why they are simply not in
+it when compared with a dog's method of wearing down your resistance.
+After the fifth repetition of the above tactics the man rose,
+stretched, put his pipe in his pocket, and hurling a pebble at the
+delighted quadruped, followed in its wake.
+
+"Just look at that, and don't say I've brought you here for nothing,"
+said the terrier, as plainly as he could with eyes and quivering body
+and tail.
+
+The man looked and held up a finger, which caused the dog to sit up and
+beg, and walked as softly as possible up to Leonie who, tired out with
+worry, heartache, and a long swim, was sitting fast asleep on that one
+slanting, delightfully comfortable rock seat, with her hair spread out
+over her face, and down to her knees, mantle wise, to dry.
+
+It is a somewhat ticklish job to lift an unknown lady's hair and tell
+her abruptly that you think the tide is on the turn, and the man stood
+in perplexity, while his brain refused obstinately to register anything
+more practical than an overwhelming admiration for the picture before
+him.
+
+However, with the attempt to unravel the problem, his hand went
+instinctively to the pocket which held his pipe, and the slight
+movement simultaneously upset his balance and solved the problem.
+
+He slipped with a rasp of nails on rock, waved his arms in a manner
+likely to cause envy in any mere flag-wagger, and recovered himself
+with all the clatter and confusion inseparable, under such
+circumstances, from the saving of self-respect and the knees of skirt
+or breeches.
+
+Quite unconscious that her stockings and high boots were upon another
+rock, her skirt only reached just below the knee and her legs and
+beautiful feet were bare, Leonie sat up as straight as she could and
+peered from between her masses of hair; upon which the dog, thinking
+that he alone was responsible for the discovery of this wild beast,
+yelped and barked and growled as he slid in and out of the pools.
+
+Pushing her hair back, and shielding her eyes from the sun and her face
+from the man, she flashed one swift glance from his shoes to his hair;
+that non-looking, all-seeing glance of woman which leaves fork
+lightning at the post, and causes you to wish you had spent a little
+more time upon your toilet.
+
+Although she had barely looked at him, Leonie could have described the
+man before her down to the minutest detail.
+
+No doubt about it he was good to look upon, with his steady eyes, the
+straight ultra-refined nose with slightly-distended nostrils, and a jaw
+which, in shape and strength, belied the almost feminine beauty of the
+mouth.
+
+He stood well over six feet, though you would hardly have thought so
+because of the massive shoulders which seemed to have been created to
+carry the troubles of the entire world.
+
+His hands, the outward, visible and infallible sign of the inner man,
+were perfect male hands, long and thin with square-tipped sensitive
+fingers, and a certain look of steel about the back and wrists.
+
+But although he had been looking at her steadily for quite a minute,
+owing to some inexplicable overpowering sensation which had seized upon
+him, he would most certainly not have been able to tell you the colour
+of her hair or that her feet were bare.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said quite suddenly and a little hoarsely, "but
+my dog brought me to you--and as I think the tide is on the turn, I
+thought----"
+
+But any further description of his thoughts was cut short in most
+unseemly fashion as, with an ear-splitting bark, the terrier hurled
+himself into the girl's lap, standing up to put its fore-paws round her
+neck, wriggling and squirming until the four feet, collar, and head
+were thoroughly knotted in the beautiful hair.
+
+Leonie held on to her scalp to lessen the pain as stray hairs were
+literally dragged out by the roots, whilst tears of agony streamed down
+her face on to the man's hands as he held the squirming animal and
+endeavoured to loosen its bonds.
+
+"Cut it!"
+
+"What!  All that!"
+
+"Oh!  I can spare it, but I can't stand the pain much longer, and I
+can't bear having my head touched.  Look, I'll hold the dog firmly on
+my lap and bend my head, it won't hurt quite as much then, only do be
+quick!"
+
+She put both hands on the shivering dog, who seemed to have sensed that
+something had gone agley, and pressing him down upon her knees bent her
+head, and her hair fell in waves about the man's feet as he unclasped a
+pocket-knife.
+
+What there was in the attitude, whether it was the humility of the bent
+head or the utter abandon of the waving hair about his knees, the man
+never knew, but he suddenly began to hack savagely and ruthlessly at
+the great strands until the dog was freed and flung far on to the sands.
+
+Then he bent and took hold of Leonie, lifting her bodily from her seat
+into his arms, crushing her desperately against his breast.
+
+Just for one moment he stared down with blazing eyes, the nostrils
+quivering slightly, and the lips drawn back enough to show the white
+even teeth, whilst the rough tweed of his coat marked her cheek, and
+the strength of his arms and hands bruised her body even through her
+clothes; then he frowned, pushed her hair almost roughly right off her
+face, and looked at her with the dawn of recognition in his eyes.
+
+And for just as long Leonie lay quite still, her eyes half closed, her
+scarlet mouth opened slightly, enough to show the small white teeth.
+
+And then, she was standing on her feet with her hands clenched in his
+against his breast.
+
+"_You_!"
+
+"And _you_!" she replied, striving gently to release her hands.
+
+"Forgive me!  For God's sake forgive me!  I--I have no excuse!"
+
+A seagull perched itself on the point of a jagged rock, uttered its
+raucous cry and was gone towards Bull Point Lighthouse shining in the
+sun; a flock of rooks suddenly swirled from the cliffs, screaming
+battle upon their opponents as Leonie answered.
+
+"There is nothing to forgive!  Some things are beyond our ken.  Will
+you get me my boots and stockings?"
+
+Her hands shook ever so slightly under the strain of the control she
+was forcing upon herself, and the pupils of her eyes were strangely
+dilated, looking like bits of night sky set in a moon circle; but she
+spoke and moved quickly as the man, having brought the foot-gear and
+unwound the cut hair from the abject dog, leant down and picked up a
+tough seaweed root.
+
+"No!" she said sharply, laying her hand on his.  "No!  It's too late to
+beat him!"
+
+"I _must_!"
+
+"I say _no_!"
+
+"But you don't understand!"
+
+Her lashes lay like a fringe on the cheek over which swept a flood of
+colour as she whispered so softly that the lap of the water almost
+drowned the word.
+
+"_Please_!"
+
+Save for the murmur of the water there was no sound whatever in the
+rock-strewn empty spot; and save for the swaying of the seaweed in the
+pools there was no movement as those two stood close to each other and
+Fate counted time.
+
+Then Leonie smiled radiantly and sat down upon a rock with a stocking
+in each hand.
+
+"Come and lunch in the next cove!" her companion said in a
+matter-of-fact voice, carefully winding the cut strands of hair and
+slipping them, without asking permission, into his breast pocket.
+"It's not so sunny in there, and I've cold soup and cold chicken,
+salad, jelly and cream--will you?"
+
+"Ra-ther!" said she, beginning to lace her boots.  And picnicking _is_
+fun in the last cove at Rockham.  The air smells so heavenly, the wind
+is so soft, the clouds so lumpy and white; and there are little caves
+in which to dress and undress for the purpose of bathing, to boil the
+kettle, or hunt for those little bits of over-dried wood which go off
+with the report of a pistol and plop out to singe your garments.
+
+And so _very_ few get as far!
+
+Somehow the tide is generally on the turn, and if by chance it is not,
+the tortuous and narrow passages between the coves, with their rocking
+rocks and hidden pools, are enough to twist the ankles and temper of
+anyone who is not Devon born or bred.
+
+"Yes!  I am due to sail for India about this day month," said Jonathan
+Cuxson, Jan for short, a little later, as he drove the cold drumstick
+of a Devon chicken into the paper bag containing salt, while Leonie,
+holding the fellow leg in both hands, or at least the fingers of both
+hands, gnawed right heartily at the middle thereof, and the pardoned
+dog sat quivering with hope deferred.
+
+"Isn't this perfectly wonderful," he went on, and Leonie mumbled
+"whum-whum" as interestedly and politely as her bone would allow.  "I
+mean our meeting like this!"
+
+She smiled and sat forward, resting one hand upon the rocks, and the
+puppy, with a lamentable slump in manners, crawled up from behind and
+gently relieved her of the bone which still had luscious scraps of
+white flesh adhering to it, and a dream of a shining gristly knob at
+the end.
+
+"Your idea of picnicing is somewhat luxurious," she said, taking a
+cardboard plate full of jelly which he had smothered in cream.  "Tell
+me what you are going to make of your life!"
+
+"You must blame or thank Mrs. Pugsley for the luxury.  I'm at
+Woolacombe, perched on the top of the hill, and she simply spoils me.
+Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+Leonie shook her head, and the two great, hastily twisted plaits
+wriggled like shining snakes, causing the dog to lay one paw on his
+bone and snarl.
+
+"I don't smoke!"
+
+"How delightful!" said Jan Cuxson.  "I was sure you didn't--I love
+women who smell of lavender."
+
+"Won't you smoke--your pipe--and tell me what you are going to make of
+your life."
+
+"They--the plans--have all been fogged up this morning !" he said
+slowly after a moment's pause.  "How strange it all is.  Do you know
+that I was going up to town next week to hunt up _you_, of all people?
+Do you remember anything of my father's death?"
+
+"We don't talk about it," said Leonie quietly, and the man looked at
+her with a sudden questioning in the steady eyes.
+
+"I am taking on his work, you know, specialising in the brain.  I have
+got through all my exams quite decently, thanks, I think, to his
+wonderful notes, have travelled a bit in the east, and before settling
+down intended to go to India--what for do you think?"
+
+Leonie shook her head.  "Holiday?"
+
+"Er--yes, almost.  You know I simply _loved_ my father, and his very
+last entry in his book of notes was about _you_.  One line was this:
+'Most interesting--shall go to India and find the ayah.'  He died of
+heart failure, you know, and he must have written the last line before
+he died--it is: 'The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is
+in the third volume upon----'  There was nothing after that--I thought
+he would be awfully pleased if I carried out his last wishes, and meant
+to hunt you up and see if you were still--er--bothered with dreams and
+then----"
+
+He stopped short as Leonie leapt to her feet and ran back from a wave
+which had most unexpectedly swirled upon her from behind a rock.
+
+"Quick!" she laughed, "quick--the tide will be in.  Where's the dog?"
+
+The dog was cavorting with a crab in a pool.
+
+"Jingles!" sternly admonished his master, who was heaving everything
+pell-mell into his haversack.  "By the way, what became of Jingles the
+first?"
+
+A shadow crept into Leonie's eyes as she thought of the pain and
+disaster she invariably seemed to bring to those she loved most.
+
+"He--he was run over--it was my fault, I whistled him across the road
+and a car caught him.  If we hurry," she continued, "we shall be in
+time for tea--Auntie will love to see you again!"
+
+"Oh! of course--I'd almost forgotten her--will she?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+  "He that rebuketh a wicked man getteth
+  himself a blot!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+By all the ill-luck in the world Sir Walter Hickle was sitting in the
+patch called the garden, turning a small parcel elatedly over and over
+in his pocket, as Leonie, and her companion, and the dog came sliding
+down the hill towards the cottage.
+
+For the time being Leonie had totally forgotten the proceedings of the
+night before, which had metamorphosed her radiant self from a free into
+a bond woman.
+
+"Oh!" she said, putting one hand unexpectedly on Jan Cuxson's arm and
+digging her stick fiercely into the ground, as the man in the garden
+half rose from his chair and sank back with a frown.
+
+"Oh!" she repeated.
+
+"Tired, dear?"
+
+Neither of them noticed the little endearing word which had slipped out
+so naturally, but Leonie's face was wan and her eyes were dead as she
+dragged herself down the last few yards, while her aunt fluttered down
+to the gate to meet them, with her mind and skirts in a whirl.
+
+"Jan Cuxson!" she exclaimed, offering a limp hand, and "How _very_
+nice," she continued, lying quite successfully.  "I should have known
+you anywhere.  _Do_ come in and have tea!"
+
+And in the same breath, and with that strange cruel cunning of the
+shallow mind, which is the abortive twin of decent feminine intuition,
+she leapt at the difficulty she saw threatening, and tried to dispel it.
+
+"Let me introduce you to Sir Walter Hickle, my niece's fiance."
+
+Sir Walter ambled forward with outstretched hand as Cuxson, nodding
+curtly, bent to pick up Leonie's stick, which had clattered to the
+floor.
+
+A malicious gleam shone in the elder man's little eyes as he looked at
+the splendid young fellow who had seemed, physically anyway, so fit a
+match for Leonie as they tramped down the hill together; and though
+there was no sign of his inward perplexity and repulsion in Jan
+Cuxson's face as his eyes swept the obese figure of the notorious old
+knight, his jaw took a sudden, almost ugly, outward thrust with the
+birth of a mighty resolution.
+
+Leonie walked to the gate with him when he took his departure, having
+refused tea from a certain undefined feeling that he could not even sit
+in the same room as the man whom he intended to do out of the odd trick.
+
+He crushed Leonie's hand as he looked straight into her eyes, so
+desperate and ashamed, and spoke very gently and deliberately as he
+slipped his hand to her wrist and pulled her a little closer.
+
+"I shall be in the last cove to-morrow at eleven, waiting for you."
+
+And naturally Leonie had responded to the mastery in the voice, as all
+women do respond when the voice is the right one; and a soft wave of
+colour swept from chin to brow as she turned from the gate, and walked
+through the doorway straight to her bedroom; while her future lord
+pranced furiously among the bric-a-brac, and her aunt's beads and
+bracelets clashed against the china as she wrung her hands over the tea
+things, and portending disaster.
+
+Leonie sat down on her bed with her eyes shining like stars.
+
+The lid of her life's casket had opened wide, and from under a hideous
+heap of fear, disgust, lost illusions, and despair, hope had sprung,
+spreading her iridescent wings in the warmth of love.
+
+She sat until the shadows crept about her, then got up from her bed
+with a little laugh, and descended to give battle for her life and
+freedom.
+
+Think of every synonym connected with the word tumult and you will get
+a vague idea of the storm which crashed about the girl's defenceless
+head as she stood with her back to the door of the tiny sitting-room,
+with a perfectly gorgeous diamond ring sparkling and flashing in front
+of her upon a table.
+
+"I cannot marry you, Sir Walter, I simply cannot do it," she was
+saying, slowly and distinctly.  "You must let me go.  So please give
+the ring to somebody else, there are heaps of girls ever--oh, ever so
+much nicer than me!"
+
+She smiled sweetly as she picked up the ring and held it out to the
+man, who snatched it from her as he sprang to his feet, and hurled it
+through the window.
+
+Then he moved to the other side of the table and leant both clenched
+fists upon it as he looked Leonie up and down.
+
+"You needn't wear the ring, my girl," he said slowly, "but no one picks
+Walter Hickle up one day and throws him down the next.  You're going to
+marry me this day month, you take that straight from me.  Let's hear
+why you've changed your mind so sudden; willing to marry last night,
+unwilling to marry to-day.
+
+"Come on, now, out with it!" he suddenly shouted, bringing his hand
+with a crash on the table as Leonie hesitated, blushing divinely.
+
+"Only--be-cause I--I don't love you, Sir Walter, and it's--it's _not_
+right to marry without love!"
+
+"Posh!  There wasn't so much of this 'ere right to marry last night.
+Fallen in love with that young feller-me-lad, I suppose.  Where did you
+meet him?  What were you doing?  How--how----"
+
+Leonie turned the handle of the door, but shrank back as the man, with
+a bound, flung himself at her and wrenched her hand free; and Susan
+Hetth clashed her bracelets and bits as she put her hands tightly over
+her face, in her fright forgetting the mixture of colours she heaped on
+it daily in the hope of stemming the neap tide of old age.
+
+"Get out, you there!" snarled the man, lashed to fury by the whip of
+jealousy.  "Get out, go away, wash your face--you look like a--a--like
+a damned fut'rist, get _out_!"
+
+And not daring to pass the two near the door, she prepared to get, with
+a great loss of dignity, through the bow window; in fact, one foot was
+just over the sill when the man called her back.
+
+"Come back," he bellowed, "I want you as witness to what I'm goin' to
+say to your niece, the young lady what plays fast and loose with honest
+men.  Fast and loose, I _don't_ fink!"
+
+Leonie shuddered as the veneer of refinement cracked under the strain
+of the man's rage, showing the brutality and grossness immediately
+underneath.
+
+She pulled her hand free, and backed towards the mantelpiece, against
+which she leant, staring at him.
+
+"I am not going to marry you!"
+
+The voice was low but positive, and the quiet in the room was intense
+as Sir Walter bounced up within a foot of her and shook a fat
+forefinger in her face.
+
+"Aren't you," he said, "aren't you!  And I'll just tell you three
+things what'll make you change your tune, my girl.
+
+"One," he placed the fat forefinger on the ill-bred thumb, "an' the
+least important, you'll marry me 'cos you're an 'etth, daughter of
+Colonel Bob Hetth, V.C., an' your fut'rist aunt ain't--hasn't half
+rubbed it in about the Hetths never breaking their word, I give you
+mine!"
+
+"Please leave my father's name out of this," quietly replied Leonie,
+her face dead white from the sickening thudding of her heart.
+
+"Well, if you don't keep your word, Miss tiger cat, I'll run you in for
+breach of promise, an' bring your father's name into court!"
+
+"You couldn't!"
+
+"_Couldn't_!--couldn't what?" stormed the man.
+
+"Run," said Leonie gently, and added sweetly, and with great vulgarity,
+"you're too fat!"
+
+"Two!" continued Sir Walter, purple in the face, but wisely ignoring
+the insult to his person.  "You'll marry me 'cos no one else'll have
+you.  You're batty, my gel--gone in the top storey--can't even go out
+to work for your living 'cause you ain't always to be trusted.  I know
+all about yer, but I'm willin' to take the risk.  There won't be any
+trapersin' round the 'ouse after dark once yer married to me, I give
+you my word.  Course, if you like to go on spungin' on your aunt,
+obligin' her to live in a 'ole like this, well, that's your look
+h'out--'ardly up to mark tho', being an 'etth, daughter of a V.C."
+
+His small eyes gleamed as they rested on Leonie's stricken face.
+
+"Stop, please," she said hurriedly, "I can't stand any more just now.
+I--I couldn't really.  Will you give me a week to think it over?"
+
+The man laughed contemptuously.
+
+"A few days, a few hours, then?"
+
+There was something horrible in the humiliation of the girl's pleading,
+but it made not the slightest impression on the ex-costermonger, who
+had at one time been accustomed to enforcing his commands with the
+buckle end of his waist-belt.
+
+"Not a minute, not a second," he chortled, seeing the end of the chase
+in sight.  "Think of the 'old I have on yer aunt.  Lady Susan Hetth,
+sister of Colonel Bob 'etth, V.C., creeping out h'of a gentleman's
+rooms at three h'o'clock of the mornin' an' payin' me 'ush money--think
+of h'it.  _Now_ what 'ev you got to say.  Why don't you be sensible an'
+quiet, gal?  I've _got_ yer, it ain't no use kickin'.  Be sensible an'
+I'll smother you in di'monds, give yer two Rolls-Royce, yacht, Monty
+Carlo any time, Park Lane--make every other woman want ter scratch yer
+eyes out--what more _could_ yer want?  Now what have yer got to say!"
+
+What was there to say?
+
+Aunt Susan tried to obliterate herself behind the window curtain; Sir
+Walter, thumbs in armholes, tilted himself backwards and forwards on
+toe and heel as Leonie came forward and leant with both hands the
+table, as she looked from one to the other without speaking.
+
+In fact the silence became intolerable to Sir Walter, who had expected,
+and would have thoroughly enjoyed a heated altercation, in which he
+would have known exactly where he was.
+
+"Well, what 'ev yer got to say, my gel?"
+
+Leonie looked from one to the other.
+
+"I will marry you this day month, Sir Walter."  She threw up her hand
+as he laughed triumphantly.  "Wait one moment!  But until that day I
+will have nothing to do with you, _nothing_.  I will not meet you nor
+go out with you, nor bother about a trousseau, nor the future in any
+way.  I shall go out and come in when I like, and go where and how I
+like.  I shall meet whom I like.  I won't deceive you, I shall meet Jan
+Cuxson just as often as I like.  And I should advise you not to
+interfere with me in any way.  He is young and strong, and, as an old
+friend of the family, might resent it.  You can trust him, he is a
+gentleman--which means--oh, well!--you will find the exact meaning in a
+French dictionary."
+
+She crossed to the door, turned, and looked, slowly from one to the
+other.
+
+"Is the bargain concluded?"
+
+"Yes!--I'll take yer on those terms--but you'll pay a 'undred per cent
+interest on the month, I've lent yer--an' _then_ some I give yer _my_
+word!"
+
+The door shut quietly as the man sank into a chair.
+
+"Batty!" he said as he mopped his bald head, "absolutely balmy.  But
+it's worth while--it's worth while--let her have 'er month--let 'er--I
+shall have a whole lifetime to break 'er in."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  "Why fret about them if to-day be sweet!"--_Omar Khayyám_.
+
+
+The great grey breakers heaved themselves skywards, paused for half a
+second, split and crashed down upon the rocks the next morning as
+Leonie and Jan Cuxson sat on the sands under the lowering sky.
+
+They had argued, analysed, plotted, and planned, only to find that each
+road they launched out upon full of hope, terminated in the blind alley
+of the old man's power over the girl.
+
+"I've just got to go through with it," said Leonie, "there is simply no
+way out."
+
+The man caught both hands in his.
+
+"Dear heaven, how I love you, child!  How I long to pick you up, as I
+did all those years ago, and carry you out of all this to happiness.
+Leonie!  Leonie!  You must marry me, I love you so."
+
+And she had sat quite still, not daring to move for fear of the mighty
+passion which surged about her.
+
+Yes!  Quite true!  They had only met twice; but there is a certain kind
+of love, exceeding rare it's true in Europe, which from an
+infinitesimal seed is capable in one second of blossoming into a tree,
+fruit and all, in the shade of which you can sit content until your
+life's end.
+
+It simply sprouts all over the East.
+
+Wishing to prevent a conflagration Leonie spoke quite calmly as she
+withdrew her hands.
+
+"And I couldn't marry you, even if I were free, because--at times--as I
+have just told you--they say that I--I--am not responsible for my
+actions?  I'm--I'm supposed to be----"
+
+"Be quiet!"
+
+Cuxson pulled her fiercely into his arms, crushing her cheek against
+his.
+
+"Tell me all, every detail."
+
+They sat there as the tide went out, and the man registered the facts
+of the tragic tale in his mind, eager to be out on the trail of the
+mystery overshadowing the girl he loved.
+
+"Mad!" he laughed when she had finished, "_mad_!--no more than I am,
+and I'm sane enough in all conscience except in my love for you.  I
+shall go to India, and wring or bribe the truth out of that ayah.  But
+we needn't worry about the date of starting yet a while, and between
+then and now we shall have found a way out of this seeming impasse.
+What is it?"
+
+Leonie had twisted herself suddenly out of his arms, looked over her
+shoulders and shivered.
+
+"It is what I was telling you about, a sensation of someone standing
+close behind me."
+
+"It's nothing, Leonie, just imagination," said Jan Cuxson.
+
+For how could he see a certain high caste native of India walking
+slowly down the gangway from the great ship just docked at Tilbury, and
+smiling inscrutably as he placed his foot in the country which held the
+white woman he sought?
+
+Leonie turned her head quickly, and shivered again, violently.
+
+"It was just as though someone had called me," she said, speaking just
+above a whisper.
+
+"Look at me, dear!"
+
+Leonie looked straight into the honest grey eyes, and the fear died out
+of her own as she met the steady gaze.
+
+"I'm slow, dear, dead slow, plodding I suppose they'd call me, but once
+I'm on to something I never let go until I've won.  Things are black,
+sweetheart, but something is telling me that I shall find a way out.
+When--when is----"
+
+Leonie lied.
+
+It was beyond her power of will to place a limit to her sudden newborn
+happiness; she would not give a definite date, and relying on the
+certainty that the man would never allow anyone to gossip to him about
+the wedding, she lied--deliberately.
+
+"Oh! there's _plenty_ of time, don't let's talk about it."
+
+She sprang to her feet and flung out her arms to the sea.
+
+"Let's forget, Jan, let's forget!  Let's steal something from Fate and
+be happy.  Let's be friends, pals; we can't be anything else, because I
+am in honour bound.  And--and--I'm _so_ hungry "--she turned her
+radiant, laughing face to him--"I'll race you to Barricane for tea."
+
+She was off as she spoke, with Cuxson close behind.  They jumped from
+rock to rock, they slipped, they slithered, they splashed up to their
+knees in pools and out again.
+
+The man did not break the compact when he caught her in the shadow of
+the wreck and drew her into the shelter of his arms.
+
+"Pal!" he whispered.  "Little pal!"
+
+And she lay quite still until the thud of their hearts, caused by the
+strenuous exercise, had given place to the stronger, steadier beat of
+steadfast love; then she slipped down, ducked under his arms and was
+away, and her laugh was caught by the wind and blown back to him as he
+ran in hot pursuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+  "Write them upon the table of thine heart!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Leonie's wrist watch very softly chimed midnight, announcing in gentle
+tones the birth of her wedding-day, as she sat with her chin in her
+hands staring out to sea.
+
+She frowned and pulled savagely at the band until it broke; there was a
+faint crash, and a faint splash, as the watch, hurtling through the
+air, ricocheted from a rock into a pool as the girl stretched her arms
+above her head, leant back, and closed her eyes.
+
+Her last midnight swim, the last time she would slip the bathing dress
+over her beautiful virgin body, the last time she would revel in
+freedom, oh! the last time of anything decent, and pure, and sweet.
+
+She had not lost her heart or her head, in fact she had gone through
+none of those amorous gymnastics which seem necessary to the cardiac
+state of being in love.
+
+She _loved_, and she knew it, and confessed it on her knees at night,
+and when she walked, or swam, or rode, or carried her food on her back,
+or braided her hair in the day.  She was loved and she knew it, and
+thanked her God when she lay down to sleep at night, and when she
+shopped, or placated her petulant relation, or played bridge or the
+piano equally badly, or got wet through in the storm, and tanned by the
+wind.
+
+Many times Sir Walter had almost been on the verge of giving her her
+desire.
+
+_Almost_!  Because it only needed two things to make him toe the line
+of sensual infatuation; the first being the graciousness of every line
+of her beautiful person when she met him by chance; and the second, the
+ungraciousness of her distinctly unpleasant manner upon the same
+occasion, over both of which he promised himself as he inwardly raged
+at her frequent, prolonged and unexplained absences, he would shortly
+have full control.
+
+The month had slipped by so quickly, the month in which she had
+indifferently left to her aunt and fiance the choosing of her
+trousseau, and the arrangement of the ceremony; also the honeymoon,
+that subsequent insight into purgatory which she was to endure as best
+she could in an isolated, thatched cottage t'other side of Hartland
+Point.
+
+A month during which she had walked, and talked, and walked again with
+Jan Cuxson, who caused her heart to thud heavily even though he did not
+touch her hand in greeting, or parting, or at any other time.
+
+They had gathered _laver_--that most delectable vegetable-seaweed--at
+the base of the Woolacombe rocks; dug and scratched for the elusive
+cowrie shell in the sands of Barricane Beach; devoured Mrs. Parker's
+teas of bread and butter and cream, jam and cake, laid on snow-white
+cloth upon trestle table; and watched their flat-pebbled ducks and
+drakes skip more or less successfully across the waters.
+
+They had tramped to Croyde, George Ham, Saunton, and all the other
+lovely spots, and whistled over the lighthouse wall at Bull Point to be
+regaled by tea on a tray, handed over by one of the perfectly charming
+family of Howgego, which comprises the lighthouse keeper, his wife, and
+his bonny daughter.
+
+All this had been done by stealth.
+
+Creeping about the cottage in stockinged feet at dawn, polishing the
+high boots before retiring to bed until they shone again; packing the
+haversack, creeping out of the cottage, vaulting the wall to the left
+to evade the gate which either jammed or creaked, and away up the steep
+incline, also to the left, and to wherever love listed.
+
+Upbraidings at night are quite bearable when the heart is aglow, and
+the future dimmed by present happiness; but upbraidings in the early
+morning are quite intolerable when the outlook into the future shows a
+black abyss through the medium of an empty stomach.
+
+She had seized upon every passing moment, wringing the uttermost out of
+it that she might have something put by with which to fill in the
+blanks of the drear future, the vacuum where should have been a
+tumultuously throbbing heart of love, and a pulse of life and passion.
+
+Also did she glean and garner, so as to be tucked in stray corners,
+memories of a flower in a hedgerow, a boat on the wing, a look in a
+dog's eyes, and the indescribable smell of a mixture of tobacco, sea
+air, and leather; and all the other little genuine antique, and ever
+new odds-and-ends of the collection labelled Love in the heart museum.
+
+Not a word had she said about the wedding.
+
+Cowardly?  Yes, indeed!  But if a prisoner were given a bottle of
+champagne to drink just before his death by hanging, it's odds on that
+instead of merely tasting a few drops he would drink the whole bottle,
+and go to his doom with the exultant thought of something nice, anyway,
+having happened to cheer him on his final exit.
+
+She simply radiated love, and allowed neither the frequent upbraidings
+of her distracted aunt, nor the hourly approach of the fatal day to dim
+the sunlight of the hour in hand.
+
+"Never you worry," she said one day, when her aunt had waylaid and
+implored her to have her wedding-dress fitted, "We'll pin it with
+safety-pins if it doesn't hang right, and as long as I'm at the church
+door on time, nothing else really matters.  And I've given you my word
+on that."
+
+And she had vaulted the wall and taken a short cut through the golf
+course until she had come up behind the man who loved her; and he,
+reading the trouble in her strange eyes, had drawn her hands to his
+heart and held them tight.
+
+How often had they stood in the shade of the fir trees in the heat of
+the day, with the intoxicating smell of the pines in their nostrils,
+and the soothing sound of the humming of many bees in their ears.
+
+They had stood so still, so close, and so very much alone.
+
+Oh! he loved her and her ways!
+
+Loved the rarity of her beauty, and the vitality of her body, loved the
+extreme care she took not to allow her fingers to touch his when
+passing a cup or a hefty sandwich.
+
+Revelled in the surge of colour which swept her face when sometimes he
+caught and steadied her on a rock; and the way in which, when sitting
+on the sand, she would suddenly scrunch up her knees with her arms for
+no apparent reason, and bury her scarlet mouth, and the eyes which
+betrayed her, in the rough tweed of her skirt.
+
+He exulted in the little half-catch of her breath, the little happy
+laugh, the extra polish he knew she put on her boots just for his sake;
+and, above all, that perfect sense of virgin woman which emanated from
+her, allied to the promise of a passion which most inhabitants of a
+northern clime would have utterly misconstrued and misunderstood.
+
+Yes!  He revelled and he exulted in every minute of every hour spent
+with her; blinded with love, led astray by the thought of months ahead
+in which he felt that Fate surely would find a way out for them, he let
+the time slip by, up to the moment when Leonie said good-bye quite
+gravely, shaking her head without a smile at the usual invitation to
+meet on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+  "Working spells
+  Upon a mind o'erwrought!"--_Thomas Hardy_.
+
+
+Secure in the solitude of her last few hours of freedom; oblivious of the
+fact that her aunt, enraged and alarmed at the unseemly and most untimely
+absence of the morrow's bride, was idiotically wringing her hands as she
+ran up and down in front of the cottage; worn out and weary with despair,
+Leonie, in her bathing dress, had gone to sleep with the full moon
+shining down upon the small, pale face, full of shadows.
+
+Jan Cuxson, uneasy at the girl's curt refusal to meet him during the last
+twenty-four hours, had started to walk to Woolacombe from Ilfracombe
+where he had spent a wretched, restless, futile day.
+
+He had tramped through the sleeping village of Lee without a look at the
+historic cottage once inhabited by the Three Old Maids, and along to the
+other little cottage on the sea front where the absence of light in
+Leonie's room caused him to guess that she was abroad.  He passed as
+quietly and quickly as possible, having determined to avoid the place for
+fear of meeting the aunt, or old Hickle, and losing his self-control.
+
+As long as you know exactly where to lay your hand on them you don't
+worry overmuch about your gold cigarette case, or your favourite pipe, or
+the diamond brooch you pin haphazard into your laces; but mislay them for
+a moment and see what a turmoil of inquietude you will be in!
+
+Never doubting the honesty of his beloved, tricked as it were by her
+happy, care-free attitude, the man had drifted contentedly in the sun of
+love, and the month of June; but to-night a bank of clouds was rising to
+meet the moon half-way upon her celestial journey, and the winds of doubt
+and uneasiness were lifting the corners of that warm, comforting mantle
+of serenity which we seldom have a chance to take down from its peg in
+the wardrobe of life.
+
+Yesterday she had left him with a flat refusal to meet him, and her eyes
+had been like the eyes of the dead, and her hands had been like ice, and
+her voice had been most uncompromisingly final.
+
+All day he had argued with himself, surmised and made excuses, sunned
+himself in the cove at Rapparree, assuring himself stubbornly that
+everything was quite all right; and at last, dinnerless, desperate, and
+afraid, had started off hot foot to find her; intending to crush the
+resistance out of her with the outpourings of his love, and force her to
+risk everything for the sake of a life-long happiness.
+
+It was just about one o'clock when he scrunched past the rusty old wreck
+and clambered up and over the rocks and through the opening to the second
+cove; and his heart leapt as he steadied himself when his eyes found that
+which they had eagerly sought; then missed a beat as, for some unknown
+reason, he stood stock still, and drew back into the shadows.
+
+Leonie was standing knee deep in a pool.
+
+The saw-edged rocks rose behind her, shining like steel in the moonlight;
+great strands of seaweed swirled about her, for all the world like
+snakes, weaving in and out of the burnished hair which spread itself
+fanwise on the water about her knees.
+
+Save for the thinnest, finest silk bathing dress which clung to the
+perfect body, as does the soft fragrant skin to the peach, she was nude,
+and so unaware of eyes upon her that the man held his breath, fearing she
+might spy him in the shade.
+
+He knew, as everyone knows, that through the criminal teaching of the
+girl-child in Europe, she would have had it instilled into her mind as
+soon as it was capable of understanding, that the slightly draped _tout
+ensemble_ of her glorious body was something to be thoroughly well
+ashamed of, though on other occasions, by means of slit skirts and
+excessive dêcollétage, she could expose in sections just as much as she
+liked to the eyes of any alien waiter who hung over her with the sauce,
+or any chauffeur who helped her into a car.
+
+Her eyes were wide and staring straight in his direction, and that she
+was asleep he had not the faintest idea.
+
+So clearly was she outlined against the rock that every line of the
+lovely limbs, every exquisite curve of the beautiful bosom showed as
+plainly as if she had been standing in the broad light of noon as she
+stepped out of the pool.
+
+With face upturned, and arms outstretched to the moon, she stood
+undulating slightly with the exquisite movements of the nautch girl,
+which has nothing to do with the _danse de ventre_ and other such
+disgusting muscular exhibitions.
+
+Watch a spider's thread floating in the air at dawn, then you will get
+some idea of the gentle, supple, alluring movement.
+
+The wind, blowing up before the storm, blew against her hair, and it
+streamed out in front of her; her arms, twining and twisting, slid in and
+out of the silky mass until she appeared to have at least four; her
+exquisite feet seemed to beat upon a human figure which was really
+nothing but the shadow of the rock behind her, and Jan Cuxson, in the
+shadows, suddenly smote his forehead as she lifted up her voice and cried:
+
+"Kali!  Kali!  Kali!"
+
+The word thrice repeated rose softly on the night air, but struck like a
+hammer upon the ears of the man who, in studying the brain, had found
+himself often and inextricably entangled in the religions and mysteries
+of the East.
+
+"My God!" he whispered, "My God, she is asleep and----"
+
+But he never moved as Leonie suddenly showed that she was aware of his
+presence.
+
+It was not that she saw him, or that she knew him; she was simply aware
+that a man was watching her.
+
+Not once did the eyelids close over the glaring eyes shining like two
+green phosphorescent stones; not a sign of recognition showed in her face
+as she laughed the sweetest little laugh in the world and moved towards
+him.
+
+Jan Cuxson had travelled pretty widely in the last few years, and had
+seen almost every kind of dance in the various ports at which he had
+called, and the towns he had visited in the East, but for absolute
+voluptuousness, and the portrayal of physical passions, he had never seen
+anything to compare with this which he watched horror-stricken by the sea.
+
+"What have they done to her?  What have they done to her?  What spell has
+been cast?  What cruel thing have they done to her?"
+
+Over and over again the questions raced unanswered through his brain.
+
+For at the thrice repeated cry he had understood in a flash that
+fastidious, pure, innocent Leonie was unconsciously performing the
+preliminary rites customary to the worship of Kali, the goddess of death,
+the wife of Siva, the daughter of the Himalayas; which rights might best
+be described as a prolonged and terrible orgy of every passion known to
+man.
+
+And well was it for Leonie Hetth that Jan Cuxson was straight and
+thoroughbred, and that his love was pure, else might it have gone badly
+with her, bringing her perchance to the door of the madhouse; for there
+is but a hair's breadth between those who are wakened roughly from the
+sleep in which they walk, and act, and speak, and those who rave in
+padded cells.
+
+She held out her beautiful, bare arms in invitation, and as he remained
+quite motionless, glided ever so swiftly to him, so close that he felt
+the sweetness of her breath upon his cheek.
+
+"Behold!" she cried softly in perfect Hindustani, "Behold!  O my beloved!
+has the Sweet One! the Gentle One! the most blessed Mother looked with
+graciousness upon her children!  May our lips cling in worship, yea! and
+our bodies in worship!  She looketh with soft eyes upon our love, blessed
+is she, O! Durga! most terrible, most fierce, most cruel!"
+
+Jan Cuxson hesitated.
+
+If he put his arms about her she might waken at any moment, and then the
+shame and horror of it all.
+
+If he did not respond might she not hurt herself in her wrath as do those
+who worship the Black One, and of whom he had heard in his travels in
+India.
+
+What on earth was he to do?
+
+And where was he to find the strength to resist the overpowering appeal
+of the sweet passion she offered him.
+
+He loved her, desired her, hungered for the touch of the sweet mouth, and
+there she stood in her youth, her innocence, her beauty, asking to be
+held against his heart, touching his hands gently with her finger-tips,
+desirous of his mouth, his hands, his love.
+
+And even as he hesitated wild anger swept over the beautiful face, making
+it terrible to behold as she raised it to the moon with a laugh that made
+the man shudder to his soul, and gasp as she suddenly tore her bathing
+suit from her and held it towards him in both hands.  He unconsciously
+took it from her, whereupon she shook from head to foot with wild
+unseemly laughter, and her glorious hair swept about her, hiding her
+completely from the desperate eyes that watched her.
+
+"Behold, O Parvati! who steppeth lightly upon the mountains!  Behold! has
+he chosen my raiment, therefore shalt thou be pleased!  Yea! and even
+shall there be blood upon it!" [1]
+
+And swinging her arm she struck it again and again against the rocks
+until the flesh was torn and the blood streamed, causing the man to move
+hurriedly with intent to waken the girl he loved, even at the risk of her
+reason and his ultimate happiness.  But he stopped.
+
+Leonie was standing still with uplifted arms, dripping blood upon her
+face whilst her sweet, clear voice rose sonorously in the _Vega_ hymn
+known as the Love Spell.
+
+Jan Cuxson had studied Hindustani in preparation for his travels in
+India, but he frowned as he listened, for he did not understand one
+syllable.
+
+And then his eyes opened wide in astonishment as he caught the meaning of
+a word here and there, and "Sanskrit!" he muttered in amazement.
+
+Pulling a piece of pale green seaweed from the rock, she twined it and
+whispered, "This plant is honey born; with honey we dig thee; forth from
+honey art thou engendered; do thou make us possessed of honey.
+
+"At the tip of my tongue, honey; at the root of my tongue, honeyedness;
+mayest thou be altogether in my power, mayest thou come unto my intent.
+
+"Honeyed is my in-stepping, honeyed my forthgoing, with my voice I speak
+what is honeyed, may I be of honey aspect.
+
+"Than honey am I sweeter, than the honey plant more honeyed; of me,
+verily shalt thou be fond, as of a honeyed branch.
+
+"About thee with an encompassing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to
+absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
+mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+Leonie swayed slightly as the words passed faintly and yet more faintly,
+like a moan, from her lips; her eyes were closing slowly, very slowly;
+and she slipped to her knees, her bleeding arms held out towards the man
+before whom she knelt, as the breeze blew her glistening hair this way
+and that, exposing for a second, then hiding the glories of the exquisite
+white figure from the eyes which could not help but see.
+
+Drooping lower and lower she stretched herself, face downwards, upon the
+sand, closed her eyes as the moon sank suddenly behind a dense mass of
+clouds, and peacefully went to sleep.
+
+
+[1]In one of the rites concerning the worship of Kali, women's garments
+are thrown in a heap, from which men choose indiscriminately.  The
+garment he chooses gives the man a right to the woman who owns it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+  "And wilt thou leave me thus
+  That hath given thee my heart?--Say nay!  Say nay!"--Sir T. Wyatt.
+
+
+What in heaven's name was he to do now?
+
+Touch her he would not; let her know that he had seen her in all her
+unhidden beauty he could not; yet the gurgling and rustling and
+whispering between the water and the stones told him that the tide was
+racing in, and that what he intended to do he must do right quickly.
+
+All he wanted to do was to gather her up in his strong arms, and
+wakening her with kisses carry her to safety.
+
+Safety from the sea, safety from the unknown spell which had been laid
+upon her, safety from the horrible future; a safety he felt which could
+only be found within the circumference of his arms folded about her in
+love.
+
+But instead he looked round for the garments she must have left
+somewhere, and seeing them, stepped quietly across the widening pools
+and gathered up the soft, sweet-smelling heap of dainty raiment;
+clenching his hands tight upon them to prevent himself from burying his
+face in the perfumed delicate things which he had not the right even to
+touch.
+
+A little knot of pale pink bébé ribbon came away in his hand, and he
+twisted it around the seaweed ring she had twined about his finger,
+then untwisted them both and slipped them into his pocket, and stooped
+to pick up something which had slipped from the garments and tinkled on
+the rocks.
+
+"Oh, you beauty!" he said as he held the jewel out in his open hand,
+and "Oh, you brute!" he said again is the cat's-eye winked cunningly at
+him with the knowledge of all ages in its lustrous depths.
+
+Then he went back, crushing his flimsy burden to his heart; and placing
+it upon a rock near the sleeping girl, strode off to the opening of the
+little connecting cove, where he stood in the shadows and called;
+
+"Leonie!  Are you there, Leonie?"
+
+Leonie stirred, settled down again to sleep, and stirred each time the
+voice rang insistently.
+
+Who knows if love would have brought her back to consciousness and the
+immediate necessity to rise and clothe herself, and flee for safety?
+
+Anyway, the tide decided and sent a little wave that thoroughly
+drenched her and brought her to her knees shivering and bewildered.
+
+"Tide in!"
+
+She glanced round hurriedly and drew her hand across her eyes.
+
+"Funny!" she said as she retreated before a wave which surged over the
+rocks and swirled up behind her.  "But--why--I've nothing on!  And my
+arm!--why, I'm simply cut to bits.  And--and oh! I've been
+dreaming--and how dark it is; there must be a storm coming!"
+
+As she spoke she hurriedly flung herself into her clothes, biting her
+lips as the lace and ribbons caught in the horrible gash in her arm,
+and was standing waiting for the water to recede before she jumped,
+just as a voice as from heaven itself called.
+
+"Leonie! where are you?  Leonie, the tide is coming in!"
+
+She did not wait, she jumped clear, stumbling and falling on the other
+side, ripping her feet until they bled.
+
+Then she got up and ran blindly, impelled by terror pursued by the fear
+of something far more terrible than death.
+
+"Jan!  Jan! help me!"
+
+Without a word he caught her and lifted her, holding her closely.
+
+Never a word he said as they raced through from one cove to the other,
+neither when the waters buffeted him nor when weeds twined about his
+feet, and rocks impeded him.
+
+Swiftly he carried her up the slight incline and laid her on the grass,
+took off his coat, ripped out his shirt sleeve, and tearing it into
+strips, bound up the bleeding arm.
+
+Then sitting down beside her he leant over sideways and picked her up
+bodily, clear from the ground into his arms; no mean feat with a toilet
+jug full of water, let alone with a hefty maiden weighted with grief.
+
+He held her in that heavenly, comforting clasp known and practised by
+stout old nurses and some mothers, within which you feel that you can
+defy anything, even to the onslaughts of peevish Fortune.
+
+His left arm was under and round her shoulders, his left hand gently
+pressed her head against his breast, his right arm was round her just
+above the knees, and he rocked her gently.
+
+Oh! the heavenly, comforting bliss!
+
+History was repeating itself, for Leonie, with great dry sobs shaking
+her from head to feet, was snuffling into Jan Cuxson's collar as she
+had snuffled into his father's years ago.
+
+"Beloved!"
+
+Sobs.
+
+"Beloved! there is nothing to cry about--_nothing_!  As I am holding
+you now, so shall I always hold you, and no harm can come to you from
+ocean, tempest or life.  _Nothing_ can hurt you because I love you!"
+
+Sobs.
+
+"_Leonie_!"
+
+She lay absolutely still, unconsciously counting the beats of his heart
+which was thudding heavily against her right shoulder, and waiting for
+the moment when she would find the strength at last to turn down her
+"empty glass."
+
+"Leonie! you've got to listen to me now, and I am not going to ask you
+to decide because Fate has decided for you.  And oh! beloved, beloved,
+thank heaven that there is still time, that you are still free, that
+heaven instead of hell is waiting for you.  Yes! dear heart.  Fate has
+decided!"
+
+He stroked her hair as he looked down into the little face crushed
+against his shoulder, and shifted her a wee bit that she might rest
+more comfortably.  Leonie closed her eyes and trembled from head to
+foot as Fate pinched the decision between claw-like thumb and finger so
+that it was stillborn.
+
+"Dear," continued Jan Cuxson as he gently patted her shoulder with his
+left hand, "dear, oh! my dear, just as I hold you now, so I shall
+always hold you.  I am going to keep you, marry you, and take you right
+away to India next week; I'll telegraph that my things are not to be
+put on board to-morrow.  You must have a nervous breakdown to-day,
+_you_ darling, just to think of _that_," and his laugh rang out against
+the sullen stillness of the dawn, "then we will slip away, and get
+married, and--oh! Leonie, I _love_ you."
+
+Leonie said no word, but from her head to her feet swept a thrill which
+the man felt from his feet to his head.
+
+He laughed again, laughed as a god might laugh with the world in his
+hand, and crushed her fiercely to him.
+
+"Beloved!  I love you! love you! love you!  And you?  Tell me you love
+me!  Why, you dare not look me in the face and say no!  You love me,
+dear!  You are part of me; you are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!
+Sorrow shall not touch you when you are all mine, your joys shall be my
+joys!  And--beloved, my children shall be your children!"
+
+With a sudden movement Leonie wrenched herself from his arms and on to
+her feet, whilst a driving cloud surrounded them, and a growl of
+thunder came over from Lundy Island way.
+
+"Love you!" cried the girl.  "Yes!  I love you, if that is the right
+word to describe what it is I have in my heart for you.  No! don't
+touch me!  Listen, I would live for you, _die_ for you in love.  Pain
+through you would be joy, joy through you would be heaven."
+
+She clasped her hands to her breast, then threw them out towards him,
+palm uppermost, in a wonderful gesture of passionate surrender, but her
+face was terrible to see, with eyes like burned out fires, and great
+smears of blood across her mouth and cheek.
+
+"All that I have for you and more--oh! much more--but--I--I cannot
+marry you!"
+
+The glass went down with a little clatter upon the coldest of life's
+cold marble slabs as Jan Cuxson, grasping the girl's arms, pulled her
+roughly towards him.
+
+That he had caught the arm right on the lacerated wound he had no idea
+as he stood looking down into the eyes which were on a level with the
+top button, of his coat.
+
+"Beloved! beloved!  You are tired, distraught!  You don't know what you
+are saying!  You are to go straight home and sleep, for _hours_, then
+come out refreshed and gloriously happy to meet me where and when you
+like!  And we will fix everything down to the very smallest detail, oh!
+dear heart, think of it! and this day week we will sail for India!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+  "That day is a day of wrath--a day of clouds
+  and thick darkness."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"India!" repeated Leonie, "India!"
+
+She flung round towards the sea, standing on the very edge of the
+cliff, the violence of the wind against her the only barrier between
+her and certain death.
+
+"Tell me," she cried, pointing to the heaving, raging mass of waters
+with a hand above which shone dully a blood-soaked bandage.  "Tell me
+what I did to myself down there just now.  I awoke in a different place
+from which I went to sleep.  I had no--I am cut and bruised.  Terrible
+things happen wherever I am--they follow me.  I woke one night in a
+pitch dark room and saw two green eyes staring at me from the wall.
+They were my eyes--reflected in a looking-glass--_mine_--they shine at
+night like a cat's--and there's a voice calling--often.  Oh!  I tell
+you I'm haunted, bewitched, _cursed_!"
+
+"Come to me, beloved."
+
+She turned and went like a child into the outstretched arms, and he,
+having wet his handkerchief on the mist-damped grass, bent the weary
+head back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains from
+the despairing face.
+
+"You walk in your sleep, Leonie, by reason of the workings of an
+overwrought brain, that is all.  India is the problem, and your ayah is
+the answer.  _I_ think she frightened you somehow, made some deep
+impression on you, on your baby brain, and we are going to India to
+find her.  It's very simple, dear, once find the cause we can easily
+find the remedy, and it will be much better if you come with me.  By
+the way, who gave you that cat's-eye?"
+
+He had made a slip.
+
+"When did you see it?" answered Leonie quickly, "I never showed it to
+you!  Were--were you down _there_ near me, _before_ you called?"
+
+"No," steadily lied the man, "but the thing slipped through your blouse
+one day--it's a brute.  Who gave it to you?"
+
+"My ayah!  Do you know, I think you are quite wrong about her.  Auntie
+says Mother told her that she nearly broke her heart when I left India,
+seventeen years ago, and she writes to me regularly every three months.
+Only last week I had a letter from----"
+
+"Do you speak Hindustani?" interrupted Cuxson abruptly, with a frown on
+his face.
+
+"Not a word!"
+
+"Or Sanskrit?"
+
+"Oh! no, neither, but the letters are in English, evidently written by
+one of those letter writers, who get so much for each letter they write
+for the illiterate poor.  And in every one she says how she loves me
+and longs for my return, and although she is very happy in the service
+of some Ranee in the north of India, she wants to give it up and come
+to me."
+
+There was a pause, broken by the nearing thunder and the crash of the
+waves against the cliffs.
+
+"Don't let's worry about that yet, dear, as everything is settled
+splendidly and----"
+
+But Leonie pulled away and stood facing him with her hands in his
+against his heart.
+
+"Do you really _love_ me?"
+
+The whisper was almost lost in the tumult of the breakers beneath.
+
+"_Love_ you, Leonie, _love_ you!"
+
+"What would you _forgive_ me through love?"
+
+"_Forgive_ you!  Everything!  Dishonour could not touch you, and
+everything else I should forgive!"
+
+Leonie tried to speak as she looked past him to the little green track
+between the downs which led to the world, and all it contained for her;
+and he, obtuse male, content in the plans he had mapped out entirely to
+his own satisfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl's consent to
+the programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across her
+face in capital letters.
+
+"Tell me that you will be content, dear.  I'm rich enough, but nothing
+compared with--oh! tell me, what do you like--what do you want--what do
+you _really_ care for!"
+
+She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day had
+been born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.
+
+Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves against
+the cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier,
+retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.
+
+"What do I want, O Man whom I love?  I want a white house within high,
+white walls, on the edge of the sea.  I want my arms full of
+children--yours and mine.  I want love, oh! love and yet more love,
+that is what I want!"
+
+The man twisted her round and held her at arms' length, her heels
+within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her
+hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his
+shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and
+silken caress.
+
+Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped
+off the earth into nothingness.
+
+But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let
+go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.
+
+You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to
+keep your word--just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.
+
+Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she
+would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey
+sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a
+marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy
+little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.
+
+"Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exulting
+in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and
+actually safe from the depths beneath.  "And that is what I am going to
+give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you
+will put into my hands.  Oh! Leonie, my love----"
+
+And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her
+go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking
+point.
+
+What a wooing!
+
+The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the trees
+bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in
+huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and
+Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.
+
+How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and
+dishevelled.
+
+Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved,
+whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay
+therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning
+rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their
+heads.
+
+She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.
+
+Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove
+where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but
+a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and
+steadied.
+
+"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"
+
+She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her
+on her feet.
+
+"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I--because----"
+
+And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into
+a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands
+on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very
+gently said one word.
+
+"Because?"
+
+"Because," and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouth
+twitching, her shoulders shaking, "because I am to be married _to-day_
+at noon!"
+
+"To-_day_! but you said----"
+
+"I lied."
+
+"You lied--to _me_!"
+
+She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in a
+trap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.
+
+"Why--_lie_?"
+
+"Why?" her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her hell and fate.
+"Why?--because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted to
+cheat life out of one month of happiness.  And I have had it--I have
+had it--and I love you----"
+
+She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down,
+clenched against her breast.  "I love you, _God_ hear me, I _love_ you!"
+
+And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled away
+through the lash of the blinding storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+  "The lighted end of a torch may be turned towards the
+  ground, but the flames still point upwards."--_The Satakas_.
+
+
+The church was simply packed!
+
+The lucky ones, almost all women, wedged tight and fast, crushed their
+beautiful clothes against their neighbours' lovely raiment in the pews.
+
+The unlucky ones stood in rows in the side aisles, just as their
+commoner sisters stand in rows upon the pavement edge to watch some
+passing show.
+
+Some, less hindered by superfluous adipose tissue, had managed to seat
+themselves upon the tomb of one Sir William de Tracy, who had one time
+unduly concerned himself in the murder of a certain Thomas à Becket.
+
+Indeed he built this church in atonement for his unseemly conduct,
+though something seems to have gone agley in the architectural penance,
+as the ghost of Sir William is to be met o' nights upon the sands of
+Woolacombe--so 'tis said.
+
+Some of the still younger fry among the spectators, I mean worshippers
+in this solemn ceremony, clasped the heads in effigy of dead squire, or
+dame, or knight, in order to get the necessary purchase for the task of
+pulling themselves up for just one second in the supreme attempt to
+catch a glimpse of the principals in the parade.
+
+Except for the setting of this beautiful house of God it might have
+been an _entr'acte_ at some theatrical first night; same comments upon
+actors and audience; same criticism upon dress and morals; same yawning
+and fidgeting.
+
+What _had_ they not suffered and sacrificed to flatter the vulgar old
+millionaire!  Anyway they expected a good deal in return for the
+excruciating journey down by rail or car, the whole day lost out of the
+season in London town, _and_ the wedding present.
+
+Unless you own the genuine thing in rank or reputation, how
+_frightfully_ difficult it is to send an astute vulgar old millionaire
+the one present which will open his doors to you.
+
+If you do own the genuine thing, an electro-plated toast-rack will be
+all-sufficient.  If you _don't_, well it's simply no good worrying
+around the bottom rung of the ladder which he has climbed, and from the
+top of which he sits making faces of derision at you.
+
+The principal performers had just disappeared into the vestry as the
+old clock chimed twelve, and Jan Cuxson, swinging back the churchyard
+gate, strode up the narrow tomb-lined path to the church door.
+
+Every woman turned to look at him as he passed.
+
+"Look at 'e now, Mrs. Ovey!  He be staying with me.  Did 'ee iver zee
+sich a butivul face.  Jist like a picture.  Sit 'ee still, young
+Gracie, an' doan 'ee walk over thikee graves, now!  I tell 'ee 'e'd
+make a proper bridegroom, 'e wud!"
+
+"Iss, I reckon!  'Er 'av done mighty fine fer 'erself, 'er 'ave; Mrs.
+Tucker tol' me all 'bout 'un, but 'er be terr'ble young, b'ain't 'er,
+for the likes of thikee ol' man?"
+
+The country women patted and pulled at their best clothes, and turned
+their sweet, slightly bronzed faces, with skins like satin, up to the
+blazing sun.
+
+"Iss, vrai! that 'er be Mrs. Pugsley!  But did 'ee iver zee the likes
+on they ther zatins an' laces an' juels they vine wimen be wearin'?"
+
+"Iss! an' luk at th' ol' paint an' stuff ther be ol over ther vaces?
+Dear, dear now, ther lips be terr'ble raid, b'ain't 'un?  Luks lik'
+they'd bin stealin' cherries!  An' ther eyes be terr'ble black!  Luks
+lik' the'd bin fightin' with ther 'usbands."
+
+Silence fell, during which sweet music stole through the church windows
+to fall like a benison upon the charming simple folk who, by their
+courtesy and gentleness, make Devon such a blissful county to dwell in.
+
+"Can't think, now," suddenly remarked Mrs. Ovey, "w'y thikee young lady
+'av chose Mortehoe Church fer 'er weddin'!"
+
+"I've year'd tell that 'er vather be related to zum lord 'oo 'elped
+kill some ol' parson, yers an' yers gone by!  Gracie! now wat be th'
+ol' man's name now that taicher tol 'ee 'bout?"
+
+"Tracey!"
+
+"Iss, iss!  I've year'd tell 'e be buried zumwher yer 'bouts, an' th'
+ol' bridegroom be proper zet to be married down yer!"
+
+"After th' weddin'," continued Mrs. Ovey, supplying information, "all
+th' vine volks be goin' on to Lay Hotel vur summat t' ate.  Arter that
+they tu be goin' vor 'oneymun over ta 'ardland in li'le ol' 'ouze.
+Poor li'le lady, an' th' ouze they be goin' to be so small ther b'ain't
+no room vur zervants nor nothin'!"
+
+"My now, Mrs. Ovey, but that young feller be proper 'ansom, b'ain't 'e
+now?  I reckon it be a pity that 'er 'adn't zeen 'im befor 'er vixed up
+with old 'un.  I remember when Bill was courtin' me, 'ow----"
+
+And so on and so forth, whilst inside the "vine wimen" from London Town
+made comments after their own kind.
+
+"Some women have all the luck," remarked an enamelled dame, whose
+bridge and dressmakers' debts were on a par with those of her three
+daughters who had safely, oh! quite, but most unsuccessfully survived
+many seasons, "I wonder how Susie managed it?  Gawky young miss, isn't
+she?  Just out of school.  Um--um--um!"
+
+"_Really! is_ she!  Strange in her manner--you don't mean it--oh! of
+_course_ not, dearest!  _Fancy_! hates society, swims at night, walks
+ten miles a day--yes, of course! not quite cosmos, what d'you call
+it--um--um--um?"
+
+"Miraud Soeurs, I believe--yes--did you like that draped effect?  I
+suppose he did--poor old Susie's up to her eyes in debt!  Didn't the
+happy bride look ghastly?  Wonder how she came by the accident--and
+what it was--and means--um--um--um!"
+
+"Yes! _very_, in a bizarre way.  I'm damned sorry for her.  Did you
+hear about the girl in the shop basement?--heavy!  I should think
+so--put the screw on what?--hear the bride's settlement is simply
+enormous--um--um--um!"
+
+And as they gossiped and criticised, tearing each other to pieces
+without zest, having already done it so often that their minds
+resembled rows of backyards piled with the rags and bones of their
+mutual enemies--or so-called friends--the organ played softly, and the
+sun through the stained glass flung dazzling lozenges of colour upon
+the tiles and pillars.
+
+Then came that unmistakable rustle of anticipation, followed by the
+satisfied sigh of those who have patiently waited either for the
+hoisting of the black flag upon the prison wall, or the appearance of a
+popular bride in the doorway of the church.
+
+There was a shimmer of white and silver, and a strenuous tussle in the
+pews and aisles as the stereotyped march from "Lohengrin" crashed
+through the little church.
+
+Jan Cuxson made one step backwards, and stopped as his heel struck
+against the wall, then stepped forward and stood right in the path of
+the bridal party.
+
+Straight down they came without a halt; gushing women who did not know
+her darted forward to shower the bride with their unwanted
+congratulations, hesitated and darted back with self-conscious giggles
+as they met the stony, unresponsive eyes in the death-white face.
+
+Very slowly she passed, with the fingers of one hand resting on the arm
+of the corpulent, self-satisfied man beside her; the other arm,
+bandaged from elbow to wrist, was held in a sling across her breast,
+the fingers nearly touching the one jewel she wore, a sleepy cat's-eye
+hanging from a slender golden chain.
+
+The happy bride was looking straight in front, down the road to
+Calvary, where stood a man outlined against the burst of light flooding
+through the door.
+
+She neither slowed nor hastened as she passed through the lane of
+twitching mouths and popping eyes and approached him; then she stood
+quite still, a gleaming, living statue in shimmering satin and lace,
+and removing her hand from her husband's arm, laid it with a little
+gracious gesture on Jan Cuxson's, and he, bending low, gently kissed it.
+
+An artist made the record lightning sketch of his life when in a few
+lines he drew the dignity, the despair, and the tenderness of the
+girl's face, upon whose brow and above whose heart rested weirdly two
+great crimson stains flung by the sun through the coloured windows.
+
+For one brief second her moonlit eyes looked straight into the steady
+grey ones; then the heavy lids sank slowly, and the faintest rose
+colour swept from brow to chin, causing the artist to murmur to
+himself, "The ice floes are breaking!" as, like the gallant gentleman
+he was, he tore the sketch slowly across and across.
+
+Two little words had been whispered loud enough to reach the ears
+beneath the orange blossom.
+
+"I forgive!"
+
+When he had said it Leonie once more laid her hand upon her irate
+husband's arm, and passed out into the sun to be met with the shrill
+cheers of the children who flung basketsful of wild flowers upon the
+bridal path, and the church was filled with a sound like a swarm of
+startled bees.
+
+"Um--um--um!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+  "Many waters cannot quench love;
+  neither can floods drown it."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+The girl kicked aside the jumble of clothes littering the cabin floor,
+and bending her head squatted upon the bunk, and incidentally, and quite
+indifferently, upon a crêpe-de-Chine blouse which badly needed washing,
+and casually watched her mother who was scrabbling through a cabin trunk
+in a manner reminiscent of a terrier ratting in a hedge.
+
+"Why on earth couldn't you stay on deck?" demanded the mother angrily, as
+she lifted the transformation from her brow and heaved it on to the upper
+berth, thereby unashamedly exposing a head not unlike a gorse common
+devastated by fire.
+
+"I can't find that--oh! here it is.  What a state it's in.  D'you think
+the Chinese man could iron it?"
+
+_That_ was one of those hybrid négligés which can serve its turn as a
+bath gown, a bedroom wrap, or, covered with a genuine native-made tinsel
+shawl (bought at Teneriffe but made in Birmingham), can pass as an
+evening gown in the tropics.  The cabin was on one of the liners which,
+calling at odd places like Genoa, Naples, Algiers, etc., allows you to
+pick up letters brought by the mail boat to Port Said.  The inhabitants
+of the inner, double berthed black hole, called by courtesy a cabin, were
+the mother and her last unmarried daughter who lived in Surbiton.
+
+The mother had successfully acquired a reputation as a world-wide
+traveller, and husbands for her numerous daughters amounting to a net
+total of six, by dint of travelling the latter backwards and forwards
+over those heartbreaking routes which suffer from two weeks or more of
+going without a break.
+
+Try from Aden to Sydney with one break at Colombo, and the above long and
+somewhat involved paragraph will be easily understood.
+
+"I say, mater, guess who gave me these--have one?"
+
+Mater sat back on her heels, bumping her head against the washstand,
+plucked a Simon Artz from its cardboard nest, lit it, and emitted volumes
+of smoke from mouth, and nostrils, until the cabin resembled the
+smoking-room of any West End ladies' club.
+
+"Oh! don't ask silly questions, it's too hot!  Who?"
+
+"The Grizzly Bear!"
+
+"_No_!"
+
+"He _did_!  He'd been ashore!"
+
+"_No_!"
+
+"Yes!  I'd been talking to him, and had just turned to say something to
+the Babe when he slipped down the gangway.  I do wish we weren't so hard
+up.  It's an awful rag going ashore.  He came back an hour ago, found a
+letter, and has been sitting up and taking notice ever since.  It was a
+man's handwriting, I saw the envelope!"
+
+Mater flung everything pell-mell into the trunk, pushed it back with the
+aid of her daughter's heels under the berth, bent her head and sat down
+beside her.
+
+"He looked so different that I actually asked him for a cigarette, and he
+gave me the box, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Tomlinson-Tomlinson's
+hateful little brat--you know--Muriel--we should have had a good long
+talk.  The little wretch actually sat on the arm of his chair; it's
+extraordinary how he lets children worry him."
+
+"Yes! dear Lady de Smythe has christened him the wet nurse!"
+
+Which leaves no doubt whatever that some time, somewhere the dear lady
+had been clawed by the grizzly.
+
+"Why don't you get into your black sequin to-night!  It'll be frightfully
+hot going down the Canal, and you can slip on the scarf if you go up on
+the boat deck, as everyone does the first time they go through the Suez."
+
+"Yes!  I might--the blue _does_ want ironing!" replied the daughter,
+taking a hand in that weird game of "make-believe" which the majority of
+women play between themselves.  For what ultimate benefit it is
+impossible to say, since from the moment the cards are shuffled they
+know, to a nicety, the tricks and manoeuvres of each player.
+
+Anyway the sequin was fished out from somewhere, and shaken and pulled
+this way and that.
+
+It consisted of a skirt of a kind, a waistbelt, two shoulder straps, and
+a big jet butterfly poised just where, for the sake of decency, it was
+necessary, and as a toilette allied with the boat deck would doubtless
+prove most attractive to the man who was not in search of a wife.
+
+The man it was intended to subjugate, meanwhile, was lying full length on
+his deck chair intent upon a letter, oblivious of the noise of the
+harbour and the racket necessary to the boat's imminent departure.
+
+Jan Cuxson had read the letter five times and was just starting on it for
+the sixth, subconsciously congratulating himself on his foresight, or
+horse sense, which you will.
+
+His cabin was like nothing on earth, and in it, upon the outer edge of a
+dead maelstrom of his entire wardrobe, stood John Smith, cabin steward.
+
+John Smith is not his name, but who does not know and bless him if they
+have ever travelled on this particular boat.
+
+He has a big, very black mole on the extreme tip of his nose, and is the
+cheeriest, most optimistic soul on the ocean wave, yea! even those
+out-size waves in the Bay at its worst.
+
+After the first lightning perusal of the God-sped letter, Jan Cuxson had
+given divers urgent orders for as much as possible of his gear in the
+hold to be thrown ashore.
+
+Imagine it, and the boat almost due to sail!
+
+He had then rushed to his cabin and initiated the maelstrom, until common
+sense had smitten him between the love-fogged eyes of his desire;
+whereupon he had heaved a huge sigh of utter contentment, propped himself
+against the door for the second perusal, rung the bell, countermanded all
+he had ordered, and left John Smith to it.
+
+He had pulled the letter out of its envelope, growled at a vendor of
+Egyptian wares, and turned with a whole-hearted smile at the sound of a
+small voice.
+
+"Is 'oo velly unhappy, Mr. Bear?"
+
+The man did not know that he had become the object of that loathsome
+habit of nicknaming all and sundry which a certain clique on every boat
+consider so smart.
+
+"I'm the happiest man on earth--water, I mean, little one.  Yes! come
+along up--and why Mr. Bear?"
+
+Followed a scramble, a gurgle, and arranging of infinitesimal frills.
+
+"Mummie calls 'oo Mr. Grizzly Bear because you're cwoss!  Mrs.
+Tom--Tom--li'son says Mummie's cwoss 'cos 'oo wouldn't take the buns she
+wanted 'oo too.  Why didn't 'oo take the buns--buns nice, I fink!"
+
+An agitated nurse swooped down at this crucial moment and recovered that
+which she had lost, leaving the man laughing aloud to the astonishment of
+all near him.
+
+_Laugh_!  Why he had not laughed since he had left Mortehoe Church,
+neither had he smiled at any time upon the boat, or upon anybody except
+the children; and now he laughed, all on account of an atrocious scrawl
+on many sheets of thin paper which he started once more to read.
+
+
+"I hope," ran the scrawl of the man for whom Cuxson had fagged at Harrow,
+"that this catches you at Port Said, because"--followed a badly expressed
+bit of business.  "London's had the shock of many seasons, by the way.
+You know that old brute, Pickled Walnuts, well I won't say anything about
+the old scallawag because he's dead.  Well! he married the other day,
+you'd sailed I think, I didn't go to the wedding.  Did you know Susan,
+old Hetth, V.C.'s sister by marriage--up to her eyes in debt--sold her
+niece to pay them, I suppose, to the old millionaire--wonder what hold
+she had on the girl.
+
+"Anyway they went off somewhere in Devon for the honeymoon, God help her.
+It seems that she had had an accident the night before, or something, and
+fainted, or something, directly after dinner--the wedding dinner, I mean.
+Did you ever learn composition on the Hill?  I _didn't_!
+
+"The woman who looks after the cottage put Lady Hickle to bed and tucked
+her up; placed a bottle of port in--all came out at the inquest--old
+Hickle's room, and left the house.  Next thing, about two o'clock in the
+morning, a shepherd or something saw a blaze and went to look.  Cottage
+on fire, old Hickle burnt to a cinder, and the girl hauled out of bed
+just in time, gibbering in French or something in panic I suppose.
+
+"The charwoman thinks the curtains caught fire in the candle, and that
+the port had made the old man sleep heavily and that he was suffocated by
+the smoke.
+
+"Full moon, too.  What a sight it must have been!  Place burned to the
+ground.
+
+"I believe Lady Hickle is quite a girl and very beautiful--and is
+starting on a tour round the world or something--she'll get most of his
+millions, I believe.  By the way, who _do_ you think have fixed it up.
+Dear old Bumble and Diana Lytham.  Heaven be good to him.  Your turn
+next, old boy!  Well she'll be darned lucky who gets you, see how well I
+trained you, d'you remember, etc., etc."
+
+
+The man sat still for some long time, then suddenly sprang to his feet
+and went aft.
+
+The dressing bugle had sounded but he had not heard; the dinner bugle had
+sounded and still he had not heard, as he stood at the stern watching the
+swirling wash of the slow-moving boat.
+
+"Full moon, too!  She was hauled from her bed gibbering in French or
+something."
+
+He quoted the words, and crushed the letter savagely in his hands, for
+even in the fullness of his joy he remembered Leonie's words, "Terrible
+things happen wherever I am--they follow me."  But in the greatness of
+his love he figuratively shrugged his shoulders, gathered his beloved
+into the safe haven of his arms, and closed the moonlit eyes with kisses.
+
+Whilst a jet butterfly fluttered in vain over a very décolleté expanse
+which covered a heart agitated by rage and disappointment on the boat
+deck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+  "And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Leonie and her aunt were having tea at the Ladies' Union Club, of which
+the latter was almost an original member.
+
+You know the place where, arriving on foot or with the trail of the
+omnibus upon you in the shape of a two-penny ticket grasped tightly in
+your right hand, you receive a stony stare as welcome from the hall
+porter, and one of dead fish glassiness from the rest of the staff.
+
+There is a certain air of geniality diffused around a taxi arrival, but
+a _car_!--two or eight cylinder--owned, borrowed, or stolen, well!
+there you win in honours, no matter _what_ kind of private address you
+camouflage with that of your club.
+
+Having cleared a way across the tobacco-laden atmosphere, through which
+can be spied ladies, young and old, inhaling and exhaling with more
+vigour than grace, they had ensconced themselves in the seat for two
+which lies isolated from the jumble of chairs and couches.
+
+That seat having the advantage of isolation, your conversation does not
+gladden the ears of your neighbour nor theirs yours.
+
+You know what that is like--if you don't, well, it's the kind that if
+written would read in italics: _Ayah--kitmutgar--pukka--chotar
+hazri--syce_, with reference, ultra-distinct and emphatic, to
+_Government House_, _Simla_, and my dear old friend, _General
+Methuselah_.
+
+Just those little British odds-and-ends which go to the ruling, more or
+less, of the land of the peacock.  Add to that the general, what shall
+I say, touch-and-go attire of the majority of the members.  You know
+what it is like.
+
+Lace collars over reconstructed tailor-mades; pseudo-suède gloves,
+chiffon scarfs, generally ropey and heliotrope of hue; odd-coloured
+jerseys affiliated to odd-cut skirts, plus jangling oriental bracelets
+and chains, and mix that with a few puckered, leather-hued countenances
+and you get the club's principal ingredient.
+
+Anglo-Indian.
+
+Anyway the place is conveniently situated, and quite bearable if you
+can put up with the waiter or the somewhat overdecorated and
+ever-changing waitress telling you, in front of your guest, that you
+"can only 'ave cakes and bread-un-butter forrer shilling,
+every-think-else-is extra."
+
+Cheery, when you may have been doing your best to make an impression!
+
+Of course every member (if she ever gets as far as this) of every
+ladies' club will here draw her pharisaical skirts about her and edge
+nearer to her neighbour.
+
+"_Did_ you read this"--quotes--"_awfully_ good, isn't it?  Of course
+it's meant for the Imperatrix--the Toga--the Ninth Century--the Spook."
+
+It _isn't_!
+
+It's just typical.
+
+Is there any one thing in any one ladies' club to differentiate it from
+its sister establishment--especially in the canteen?
+
+I will pay one year's town subscription to any woman knowing, of
+course, the difference between husks and food, who will honestly
+declare that her heart has _not_ plumped to her boots after a
+spur-on-the-moment invitation to a _man_ to lunch or dine at her club.
+
+By spur-on-the-moment I mean when she has not had the time to negotiate
+with the cook, via the head waiter.
+
+You do not need the menu to tell you that plaice is here your portion;
+or a lightning glance to ascertain that the exact number of your prunes
+is six, and that of your guest half a dozen; or just a sip of your
+coffee--well! there you begin to talk feverishly and to press liqueurs
+and cigarettes upon the suffering guest.
+
+But to come back to the club tea-room.
+
+"My dear," Susan Hetth was saying, jangling with the best, and pitching
+her voice so that it literally, though slangily, beat the band, "I
+really think, considering your position and recent bereavement, that
+you _should_ wear----"
+
+"Please be quiet, Auntie," said Leonie, who in a grey and pale mauve
+confection looked like a field of statice against a pearl-grey sky.  "I
+came here to talk about you, not clothes.  You see I want to tell you
+how I have settled things before I sail."
+
+Her aunt fretted with a teaspoon, and spoke in the absurd peevish way
+which had been so attractive at seventeen.
+
+"For the last time, Leonie, I want you to listen to me!"
+
+"Other way round, Auntie," said Leonie, who had chosen the club, of all
+places, for a last _tête-à-tête_ with her relation, in the hope that
+the presence of others would serve as a dam to the flood of tears which
+had streamed almost unceasingly during the last month.
+
+"But it's absurd, idiotic----"
+
+"Auntie, dear, we've been through all that a hundred times, and a
+hundred million times more won't make me change.  I will _not_ touch a
+penny of Sir Walter's money----"
+
+"Oh!  Leonie, your _husband_!"
+
+"Not my husband in any sense at all, except for the awful name.
+Why"--and she spoke with sweet intense enthusiasm--"do you know they
+are going to build a house in Devon for blind babies out of my marriage
+settlement, and endow it, and have resident teachers--think of it----"
+
+Leonie broke off to manipulate the tea-things to the rhythm of a
+one-step.
+
+"And all the rest of the money, Leonie, oh! it's scandalous!"
+
+"Oh, that!" said Leonie, manoeuvring the milk out of a broken milk-jug.
+"Except for Sir Walter's special bequests, it all goes back to the
+family.  They've almost all come to see me at the hotel, such honest,
+nice people; and oh! so grateful.  Mrs. Sam Hickle is moving to Balham
+from the Waterloo Road to open a fruit shop, she brought me a huge
+basket of vegetables, carried it into my room herself; and a young Bert
+Hickle, who has a whelk-barrow in the Borough, brought me a whole
+turbot which had soaked through its newspaper wrapping.  He gave it to
+the page-boy to carry, and I _do_ wish you had seen their faces when
+the tail suddenly burst through, just as the page-boy was gingerly
+laying it down on a most appropriate resting-place, a marble consol."
+
+Leonie laughed just as the music stopped, a ringing, happy laugh which
+caused people to stare and then nudge, or kick each other
+surreptitiously as they recognised her.
+
+"It's all settled about you, Auntiekins.  I'm paying your debts, which
+aren't so terrific, only foolish, and giving you five hundred pounds to
+go on with.  That, with your own income, will be all right if only you
+will live in the country instead of hanging on to the edge of a society
+which doesn't want you.  Still, you do exactly as you like, dear, only
+remember that I shall only have just enough to live on when I've got
+through the thousand pounds, and don't run up any more debts."
+
+"Why not _invest_ the thousand, Leonie, _sensibly_."  Susan Hetth's
+voice was dull, choked doubtlessly by the dust of her castle ruins.
+
+"I've got to go to India!"
+
+"Why, for goodness sake?"
+
+"I don't know, Auntie, I've simply got to go!"
+
+"How silly," said Auntie, as she forced a cigarette inartistically into
+a holder, adding abruptly, as her commonplace mind jumped at a
+commonplace loop-hole, "Where is Jan Cuxson?  I should think----"
+
+Leonie answered quickly, breaking her aunt's words.
+
+"I have no idea!  I haven't heard from him since he left England."
+
+"Huh!" said Susan Hetth, putting up an absolute smoke screen, "and what
+will you do after the money is spent, pray?"
+
+Leonie stared wide-eyed into the tobacco haze.  "That," she said
+slowly, "is on the knees of the gods!"
+
+Talking being temporarily suspended by the band in the death throes of
+the overture to Zampa, the two women sat silent; one frantically trying
+to solve financial problems, the other with her head a little on one
+side as though trying to catch the thread of some conversation.
+
+A strange thing happened as the band stopped.
+
+Leonie rose quite suddenly, with a half-eaten cake half-way to her
+mouth.
+
+"I must go!" she said quite flatly, placing the cake on a plate and
+looking at her aunt without seeing her.
+
+"_Go_!" shrilled Susan Hetth, putting her fourth cup of tea down with
+an irritated slam.  "Where on earth _to_?"
+
+But Leonie turned and walked away with never a word of explanation, and
+her aunt, with the thrifty side of her plebeian soul uppermost, turned
+to the task of getting through as much as possible of what was left of
+the two teas for which two shillings had been paid.
+
+The porter looked hard at Leonie when she asked for a taxi, hesitated
+for a moment, looked hard again, and refrained from putting the
+question hovering on his tongue.
+
+"Seemed quite dazed like," he explained later to his wife in Camberwell
+as she juggled with sausages, "pale as death, with a kind of funny look
+round her eyes!"
+
+"To the British Museum," Leonie said through the window as the taxi
+door closed, and the funny look round her eyes deepened into a line of
+perplexity between the eyebrows, as the cab bore her swiftly to her
+destination and her destiny.
+
+She walked swiftly up the steps to the institution she was visiting for
+the first time, and through the glass swing doors, just as though she
+was hurrying to an appointment; she turned, without hesitating, sharply
+to the left up the long flight of stairs, passed through the rooms
+filled with relics of Rome found in Britain, and stopped.
+
+Just for a second she put the palm of her ungloved hand against her
+forehead, sighed quickly, with her head bent forward, then passed
+through the doorway, turned to the left, stopped and said "Yes?"
+
+And the man, in faultless western clothes save for the white turban
+which with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face, with a
+look of satisfaction in the dark eyes, salaamed before the beautiful
+woman who had looked at him questioningly.
+
+"Allow me!" he said simply, bending to pick up the glove she had
+dropped, the smile of satisfaction deepening as he looked at her again.
+
+She had turned from him, and stock-still was staring into the glass
+case which lined the wall.
+
+Closer she pressed, until her nose, flattened against the glass looked
+like a white cherry.
+
+"Kali," she read, "Kali, the Goddess of Death.  I thought--I----"
+
+Lower she leant to look at the square stone image numbered thirty-seven.
+
+High breasted, squatting on her crossed legs, garlanded with skulls,
+with five hands, holding a sword, a thunderbolt, a skull, a snake, a
+cup, and the other two raised in blessing, the goddess leers at you
+like a very old woman from behind the glass.
+
+Leonie turned swiftly to find herself alone; and the hunted look in her
+gold-flecked eyes deepened to horror as she gathered her skirts about
+her, and fled blindly through the rooms, and down the stairs, and out
+of the building.
+
+Heading straight down Museum Street for Oxford Street, she ran across
+the road at the risk of her neck and the wrath of a taxi-driver; gave
+one terrified backward glance at a law-abiding student from India, who
+was going to his cheery lodgings in Bloomsbury; and fled into the
+tea-rooms which lure you outside with the pretty apple-painted ware in
+the window, and where inside, one beautiful little blonde head shines
+like a field of ripening wheat.
+
+Safe, she crouched down behind the window curtain with her eyes fixed
+unseeingly on the distorted figures of the Java frieze.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE EAST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+  "But when the desire cometh,
+  it is a tree of life."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+The first-class passengers, leastways the passengers travelling first
+class, lay stretched out side by side, one sex to starboard, t'other to
+port, divided, however, more by the fear of the eyes of the other sex,
+than by any hatch piled with chairs, or ship rule pinned upon the
+notice-board, and signed by the chief.
+
+Surely the hours of the tropical nights passed in sleep on deck are
+those in which we should return thanks for lacking the gift of seeing
+ourselves as the officer going on, or coming off watch, the fugitive
+apprentice, or some stray passenger see us.
+
+Human chrysalis, wrapt in the cocoon of sheet or unsightly night
+attire, with starboard boudoir cap awry, exposing the steel cracker or
+the lanky lock; unsightly pedal extremities peeping from the unfeminine
+pyjama; ruby lips, uncarmined, ajar; whilst to port like rocks from the
+ocean, unshaven chins rise unrebuked from blanket billows, and pyjama
+button and buttonhole play touch across the unseemly, unrestrained and
+unconfined masculine torso.
+
+It was one of those insufferably hot nights you get sometimes as you
+turn into the Hoogli, when the smell of the land comes in sickening
+wafts, and the enchantment of the East is considerably lessened in your
+opinion by the oppression of the atmosphere.
+
+You are going up the Hoogli! you are passing the Sunderbunds! you can
+almost see the tigers squatting in rows at the water's edge! it is the
+East! it is India!--also it is infernally hot, and having retired to
+your cabin to disrobe, you anathemise your stable companion who has
+been likewise inspired; curse your overworked cabin steward who has
+heaved your bedding on to the wrong site; re-arrange everything and bed
+down.
+
+Everyone was asleep when the light of the full moon caused a subdued
+lustre under the awnings, and a greenish light in Leonie's wide-open,
+staring eyes, as she suddenly swung herself over the side of her bunk
+and slid unhurt to the floor.
+
+She made an arresting picture as she stood listening intently, her
+flimsy garment falling away from her shoulders, leaving the slender
+white back bare to the waist, while she held handfuls of the
+transparent stuff crushed against her breast, upon which lay a jewel
+hung from a gold chain.
+
+Her feet were bare, her arms were bare, and her tawny mass of hair hung
+in two thick scented plaits to her dimpled knees; and she repeated some
+words over and over again like one insane or delirious.
+
+"_Ham abhi ate hai--ham abhi ate hai_."
+
+Which being translated means "I come--I come."
+
+Without the slightest hesitation she opened the door of No. 1
+state-room, which she had had to herself after Port Said, and which, as
+anyone who has travelled on this particular boat will know, gives on to
+the dining saloon; passed swiftly along the narrow passage past the
+notice board and the head steward's cabin, and stood among the human
+cocoons on deck.
+
+For a moment she paused irresolute, turned, and swiftly mounted the
+companion-way to the bridge deck, her bare feet making no sound, her
+beautiful body shining like ivory through the flimsy garment she held
+gathered to her breast.
+
+Oh! well for her was it that the ship slept, and that the awnings made
+it almost impossible for those on the bridge to see what took place on
+the deck.
+
+Though a report of sleep-walking on board would only have served to
+broaden the lines of laughter in the chief officer's mercurial soul,
+and deepen the lines of cynicism around the second officer's cynical
+mouth when the one relieved the other on the bridge at the matutinal
+hour of four a.m.
+
+And very well for Leonie was it that the captain had forbidden sleeping
+on his deck, and that the high caste native who had come aboard at
+Colombo was sitting on the port side as she approached.
+
+Owing to his high caste, and the purity of his habits, the young native
+had passed the days apart from his fellow-passengers since he had come
+aboard; and the days left were too few for the white folk to show any
+curiosity concerning the handsome man.
+
+You don't feel curious about anything after almost five weeks
+seafaring; you feel kind of stunned.
+
+Leonie, therefore, had not noticed him particularly as he sat apart
+with his delicate oval face behind a book when she approached, or
+passed his chair; neither had she felt the gentle luminous eyes resting
+upon her from the nape of her sunkissed neck to her slim ankle.
+
+Nor did he now, long after midnight, make any sign when, without
+touching the rails, she came swiftly up the companion-ladder, bending
+her bronze head to miss the edge of the awning; and he made no movement
+as she sped past him, crossed the deck to the starboard rail, and
+putting both hands upon it, swung her body back as you do when you are
+going to vault clear.
+
+No movement of his body, but he gave a jerk of his will-power which
+brought the veins out like whipcord upon his forehead, and drove the
+nails deep into the palms of his hands.
+
+And in response, Leonie's arms slackened.  She stood quite still,
+staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she
+put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat
+sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch
+of the ship would have sent her headlong into the water.
+
+The native's eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils dilated strangely
+as he pitted his will against the force which was impelling her.
+
+He dared not speak, he dared not touch her.  For he knew that one
+moment of recognition, one breath of scandal touching himself and the
+woman he trailed, meant the crumbling of the altar he was building
+stone by stone to his god.
+
+For that reason he had taken the mail instead of the slow boat she had
+chosen, and had thought long before deciding to come aboard, even at
+Colombo.
+
+He was afraid because of the evening she had answered when he called
+her across London to his side, by the image of Kali the Terrible in a
+glass case; afraid that she might recognise him and be on her guard,
+undoing all that he had done in the last year in obedience to the
+mandate of the old priest.
+
+Sleeping Leonie, having descended from her perilous seat, stood for a
+moment with outflung arms, looking across the waters; then turned and
+walked swiftly and softly like a cat, straight up to the man who rose.
+Sweetly she laughed up into his face as she laid one little hand upon
+the great white cloak which swung from his shoulders, unaware that in
+moving her hand her own garment had slipped, and that her beauty lay
+exposed like a lotus bud before his eyes.
+
+She came so close that her bare shoulder touched the fine white linen,
+and the curves of her scarlet lips wet but a fraction of an inch from
+his own; and her whimpered words in the eastern tongue were as a flame
+to an oil well.
+
+"This plant," she murmured, with the light of unholiness in her
+gleaming eyes, "this plant is honey born--at the tip of my tongue
+honey--mayest thou come unto my intent!"
+
+He answered softly in the same sonorous tongue and she swayed towards
+him like a flower.
+
+"About thee with an encompassing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to
+absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
+mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+Where is the dividing line?
+
+What is it that causes the saint suddenly to fling aside his holiness
+and hurl himself headlong to perdition? or the sinner to hurl aside his
+evilness and fling himself headlong into a monastery?
+
+The jogging of memory, mostly, I think.
+
+For what resolutions can not be conceived, and accomplished, or broken
+by the scent of a flower, the touch of a hand, or the feel of a piece
+of stuff.
+
+Love, sudden, overpowering oriental love consumed the man, passion
+scorched his soul, and desire shook him from his dark head to the
+slender feet.
+
+He was awake and the girl was asleep, and craving to set his seal upon
+her in her unconsciousness, he bent towards her until the fierceness of
+his breath disturbed the lacey frill about her breast, bringing to view
+the jewel suspended from a golden chain.
+
+Instantly his joined hands were raised towards his face mechanically in
+prayer, his eyes burned with the fanaticism of his creed, and his face
+became old in knowledge.
+
+The dividing line? the lifted veil?  Nay! nothing but a jewel with the
+form and the colouring of a cat's-eye, which had cunningly winked up at
+him from the secret places of the girl's bosom; so that she returned to
+her cabin with her body unscathed, and her soul on the edge of the
+precipice.
+
+And the most razor-tongued, detested colonel mem-sahib of the line in
+India thanked her stars that the mosquitoes had roused her frantically,
+but just in time, to see the trailing edge of Leonie's indecorous night
+attire disappear through the door.
+
+Aloofness, allied to perfect shoes and silken hose, will find a woman
+more enemies on board than all the pretty faces and frocks in the
+world; and if, in addition, she _can_ heap on such items as a seductive
+face and figure; and if gossip via the newspapers can and _does_ supply
+information as to the contents of her pass-book, plus savoury rumours
+concerning mysterious incidents in her past; well! 'twere better for
+that woman to stop at home, bob her hair, and take to that field of
+literature which is not bound on any side by the hedge of convention.
+
+So it came about that her friends, after stumbling up the gangway at
+the Kidderpore Docks, with handkerchiefs held against their noses to
+protect them from the effluvia wafted from Garden Reach, lifted their
+eyebrows slightly at the frostiness of the adieux between their guest
+and her fellow-passengers.
+
+And no one in the scramble and flurry noticed the elderly pock-marked
+ayah who had been engaged as Leonie's bodywoman as she lifted the hem
+of the mem-sahib's skirt and laid it against her forehead, and touched
+the instep of the high caste native when he passed behind the girl and
+disappeared in the crowd of his countrymen which opened up a way before
+him.
+
+An ayah, who, to the utter astonishment of her friends, had given up
+the high position of head body-woman to a Ranee of the North, in order
+to accept the humble post of ayah to a mem-sahib.
+
+A post she had gained by the baffling methods of the East which bind
+each man's work to that of his neighbour with an unbreakable,
+untraceable chain; and gained too, over the sleek heads of many of her
+sister ayahs, who, armed with countless and phenomenally laudatory
+chits, had squatted patiently for hours in the servants' quarters of
+the bungalow at Alipore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+  "For lo! the winter is past,
+  and the rain is over and gone!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"That's Lady Hickle!"
+
+The two men turned in their saddles as Leonie went by at a canter near
+the rails.
+
+The raking great waler forging ahead like an engine of destruction was
+kept in check by Leonie, exuberant with health, the knowledge of a
+perfect seat and hands, and that uprush of spirits which an early ride on
+the Maidan brings--to some of us.
+
+"Not _the_ Lady Hickle?"
+
+"The same!"
+
+"Well, I'm damned! she's only a girl, and _what_ a seat!  Chucked the
+millions, too, didn't she?  Having a good time?"
+
+John Thorne frowned as he backed his horse before answering.
+
+"We're great friends," he said shortly, and the other man tapped his
+teeth with his whip.
+
+Thorne hadn't the slightest intention of implanting a snub, as the other
+man knew, knowing him and his most unfortunate manner.
+
+Friends, yes! they were friends, two strong, super-sensitive characters
+drawn in sympathy one to the other; and John Thorne would have liked to
+have been a good deal more than a friend, but he had the sense to realise
+that the only kind of woman he could ever ask to share his rising
+fortune, bad manners, and worse temper, would be of the type designated
+in the short and unromantic word _cow_.
+
+One of those slumbrous, sleek creatures who stand knee deep and content
+in a field of domestic trivialities; ruminate placidly upon the happy
+little events of the past hour; and always find a hedge under which to
+shelter at the first intimation of a storm.
+
+Lucky, lucky cattle who do not know the temperamental ups and downs, the
+mental lights and shadows, the physical and psychological upheavals, or
+the intense joys and griefs of the more highly strung goat.
+
+At that moment Leonie rode back slowly with some friends, and smiled at
+John Thorne.
+
+"No!" Thorne went on meditatively, "no, she's _not_ having a good time.
+I can't quite make it out.  You see, although she was only married for a
+day, the defunct tradesman husband rather overshadows her father's
+splendid career--old Bob Hetth, V.C., you remember.  It _would_ in this
+caste-bound country.  Caste amongst _us_, ye gods!  Then her clothes are
+really lovely, oh! ripping! make Chowringhee confections look as though
+they'd come from the _durzi_ or the Lal Bazaar.  And it seems that she's
+living on her capital, and that her hair curls naturally----"
+
+The other man laughed out loud.
+
+"Oh! you needn't laugh.  Wait until you've been stationed as long as I
+have in Calcutta, then you'll----"
+
+Leonie had turned and was coming up at a gentle trot.
+
+"Gad! isn't she beautiful?" said the newcomer.
+
+"Yes!  I think that's _really_ her trouble," replied Thorne as he moved
+to meet her.
+
+"Good morning, and don't come too near the Devil.  We were out in the fog
+this morning and it has made him as touchy as anything.  Isn't it a
+simply perfect morning!"
+
+For a moment she sat and looked at the funnels and masts swarming the
+placid Hoogli, turned her head as a far-away siren announced the arrival
+of a liner, gave a little sigh as she looked up at a kite sailing
+care-free overhead, and came back to earth with a smile.
+
+"How d'you do," she smiled, upon the introduction of the other man.  "And
+don't come too near the Devil, he's nervy; in fact I think he will burst
+with suppressed energy if I keep him standing longer.  Shall we canter as
+far--oh!----"
+
+"Hell!" finished Thorne after his kind, causing the corners of Leonie's
+beautiful mouth to lift as she raised a reproving finger.
+
+The razor-tongued, most feared and detested colonel mem-sahib of the
+line, in the whole of India, rode up with a seat which would not have
+disgraced the sands of Margate.
+
+Thinking that she might as well share the pig-skin, she had, upon her
+husband attaining his majority, taken a dozen riding lessons somewhere
+near Regent's Park; had hacked irregularly ever since, and still, when
+off her equine guard, talked about a horse's ankles.
+
+"Don't come too near the Devil, Mrs. Hudson, he's _so_ fidgety."
+
+"Nonsense!" brusquely replied the lady as she nodded to the men.  "It's
+you who are fidgety; comes of all your sleep-walking, brain fag or
+whatever you call it; you've--you've inoculated the poor darling," she
+added, clapping her hand on the Devil's hind-quarters.
+
+Thorne made an ineffectual grab as the Devil reared so straight that
+Leonie's face was hidden in the mane, and backed his horse as the waler
+came down with a terrific clatter on the hard ground, scraping the
+colonel mem-sahib's foot as she wheeled about, emitting silly little
+cries, whilst men tore up from all sides with desire to help.
+
+Up again he shot, pawing the air until it seemed that he surely must fall
+backwards, and men and women stared aghast until Leonie, raising her arm,
+brought her whip down between the silky ears.
+
+"Damnation!" said John Thorne as Leonie patted the Devil's neck as he
+danced nervously on one spot.
+
+"Time I took him home," she said.  "The syce?--no!  I daren't give him to
+anyone as he is--oh! good morning----
+
+"Saw your _haute école_ stunt, Lady Hickle," burst out a lad who rode a
+fallen star in the shape of a discarded discreditable polo pony.  "Simply
+topping--but the Devil's a nervy demon, you _shouldn't_ ride him--he'll
+get away with you one of these fine days.  What happened?"
+
+"He bumped into my horse, he's not safe to be out amongst us--indeed, he
+is _not_.  Lady Hickle, I have been in Cat----"
+
+The rest was lost in precipitate flight with the colonel mem-sahib's arms
+closely hugging her pony's neck, to the joy and the infinite delight of
+the rest of the spectators.
+
+Unseen, uncouth John Thorne, furious at the scant courtesy shown to the
+lady of his dreams, had brought his whip down heftily, just above the
+mangy tail of the colonel mem's pony.
+
+"I think I'll ride alone, if you don't mind," said Leonie with a ripple
+of suppressed laughter in her voice.
+
+"All the way to Alipore?"
+
+"Oh! it's not far, and I daren't trust the syce, the Devil would simply
+_eat_ him."
+
+The boy sidled in between her and Thorne, to the latter's infinite
+annoyance.
+
+"Are you still keen on the _shikar_ stunt, Lady Hickle?"
+
+He gazed at her adoringly, and she smiled back into the honest, merry
+eyes.
+
+"_Shikar_ stunt?"
+
+"Yes! you remember--Sunderbunds--dâk bungalows--_shikari_--wild animals
+in bunches--discomfort and all the rest.  Say yes!  Oh! _do_!" as Leonie
+slowly shook her head,  "It'll be such a rag!  Major and Mrs.
+Talbot--she's a fine shot--you and me, and we've got to get another
+fe--woman 'cos a simply top-hole fellow walked into the club last night,
+who's wonderfully keen on it; we're kind of related, his father was my
+mother's second cousin."
+
+"And the higher the fewer," interposed Thorne, as Leonie laughed.  "And
+what's the top-hole fellow's name?"
+
+The youngster eyed the elder man with disapproval.
+
+"Name--coming brain specialist--setting the old fossils in Harley Street
+by the ears--forgotten more than they've ever learned--name--why, Jan
+Cuxson.  Won't you come, Lady Hickle?"
+
+Leonie had suddenly bent to adjust her stirrup leather.
+
+Her face was dead white, her eyes like stars, her mouth like a gate to
+heaven.
+
+Almost a year and not a word, not a sign!
+
+Tortured by doubt, racked with love, she had gone her way silently;
+blaming herself one moment for the ease with which she had shown her
+love; staking her all the next on the honesty of the man who had kissed
+her hand in forgiveness in the old Devon church.
+
+Making excuses, heaping the blame upon herself, wearying, wondering--and
+now!
+
+She lifted her face, which shone like the Taj at noon, and the worshipful
+company of men looked at her, almost stunned by its incomprehensible
+radiance.
+
+"Yes," she said softly, without thought of the Devil's nerve-storm.
+"Yes, I will surely come!"
+
+As she spoke there was a terrific report as the hind tyre of a passing
+car burst with due violence, a sudden convulsive bound as the Devil leapt
+with all four feet off the ground, and a thunder of hoofs as, with the
+bit between his teeth, he cleared for the open just as a man on a
+sixteen-hand bay turned in at the race-stand opening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+  "To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
+  And witch the world with noble horsemanship!"--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+The onlookers behaved in the orthodox runaway-horse manner.
+
+Women screamed, or took the opportunity to manipulate a surreptitious
+powder-puff.
+
+Men shouted and waved their topees, or shouted and performed equestrian
+gymnastics, and the jockeys _en masse_ cursed their masters' presence,
+and the more or less mythical value of their respective mounts.
+
+Just for that one moment in which anything occurring out of your
+ordinary rut leaves you practically stunned into inertia.
+
+Then things began to shape themselves, and for one unbelievable second
+caste was thrown to the soft wind which was sweeping up the last rags
+of mist.
+
+Military mingled with commerce, the I.C.S. which, written in full,
+means God's Anointed, looked _at_ instead of _through_ the railway;
+jute condescended to the tourist, and white ejaculated to kaffyolay as
+they all sat gazing after the retreating form of the Devil and the
+pursuing shapes of one or two, who, fairly decently mounted, were
+pegging away stout-heartedly in a perfectly vain, but praiseworthy
+effort to save Leonie from certain death.
+
+And then a sigh of relief went up.
+
+A bay, stretched out, was flying like the wind, hoofs thundering on the
+hard ground, tail streaming, as, urged by his master's heel and voice,
+he strove to get to the tank before the runaway.
+
+The distance and the speed were too great, the horse and kit were not
+sufficiently familiar to allow the spectators to identify the one man
+who seemed to have a plan in his head, and a horse under him.
+
+The women strained their eyes in an endeavour to distinguish him, men
+kept theirs glued to Leonie who was riding straight and apparently
+making no effort to check the Devil, and policemen, forgetful of their
+dignity, their status, and their red turbans, hung over the rails near
+the grand-stand entrance with a riff-raff of taxi chauffeurs, pukka
+chauffeurs and syce.
+
+For the first two hundred yards across the brown grass of the Maidan,
+Leonie thoroughly enjoyed the tearing gallop, having failed to grasp
+the fact that the Devil was bolting; but after having spoken
+soothingly, and pulled firmly without making any impression, somewhere
+about the middle of the polo ground she awoke to the fact that
+something had to be done.
+
+"They're in it!  No! missed, by Jove!"
+
+The jockey bunched himself in an ecstasy of relief, and his mare danced
+with a fellow-electrical feeling as the Devil, wheeling sharply from
+the sparkling water in the tank, missed the lone tree by a foot; then
+gathering fresh impetus from the ever-nearing sound of thudding hoofs,
+tore towards the rails enclosing the two tracks.
+
+They are not high, but they are fairly close together, and four in all,
+and a horse, blind from fear or temper, is quite as likely to let you
+down at the first as at the fourth.
+
+But Jan Cuxson saw a gleam of hope.
+
+Surely the runaway would slacken, surely no horse could possibly take
+four fences at that terrific speed; and if he did slacken, then the
+bay, as nimble as a cat in spite of his weight, would catch up, and
+something would be done before they dashed headlong across the
+tram-threaded, crowded Kidderpore Road.
+
+Except for admiring her seat and seeming calm acceptance of her
+inevitable and horrible end, he had not bothered about the girl as a
+human being; but he frowned suddenly in a vague effort of recollection
+when she stretched out her hand in a beckoning gesture for help to the
+man she heard racing to her rescue.
+
+"By Jove!" he cried, and "_By_ Jove!" repeated the others behind, and
+"By _Jove_!" echoed the distant on-lookers as, without hesitation or
+click of hoof on wood, the Devil rose to the first, the second, the
+third and the fourth rail, skimming them like a bird, while the bay,
+just two rails behind, crashed over them with nothing to spare.
+
+Inky words take a long time to write, but Leonie's perilous career
+towards the river was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes,
+leaving the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, _gharries_ and
+trams no time in which to make an opening for her tempestuous passage.
+
+"Wah!  Wah!" shouted a group of natives, draped in gaily coloured
+shawls, who watched admiringly the woman's perfect seat, caring not an
+_anna_ that she might be thrown and break her neck or be crushed to
+death.  In fact, the halo of death encircling the woman's head lent
+enchantment to the sport, causing some of the more wealthy to bet upon
+her end.
+
+A woman, white or brown, more or less in India of what account? though
+it were a different matter in the case of the sahib who rode in
+pursuit, with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes of fire.
+
+Two women, with babes astraddle on the hip, turned to watch Leonie,
+then stuffing more betel nut into their already crimson mouths, moved
+lightly through the dust towards the bazaar.  Crouched at the foot of a
+tree, inhaling the smoke from the bowl of his rude native pipe, an old
+man under the benign influence of the drug, lost in dreams, took no
+notice whatever of the disturbance around him.
+
+But the drivers, with raucous cries, twisted the tails of their kine to
+port or starboard, or beat them forcibly, and the tram driver, roused
+from the lethargy engendered by the cool of the early morning, by the
+shouts and cries, put on his brake, bringing his tram to a stand-still
+just as, with a terrific clatter of hoofs, Leonie dashed past the front
+of it with Cuxson at her heels.
+
+There was a moment's uproar when, wishing for a better view, the driver
+of a tawdry _ekka_ urged his half-starved pony forward.
+
+The bay caught the side of the pony's bleeding mouth, causing the
+wretched animal to rear from pain and twist sideways into a bullock
+cart.
+
+In its usual leisurely way the bullock swung itself also sideways, and
+almost under the bay's feet, causing him to lose a precious second, for
+which Cuxson made up by a ruthless use of his spurs, whilst before
+Leonie's eyes, quite close, through the trees, appeared the funnels and
+masts of the river craft.
+
+"Oh!" she said involuntarily, having retained no impression during her
+motor drives of the road to Kidderpore; as the Devil tore with her
+across the old polo ground and the old Ellenborough course, straight to
+the crowded Strand Road.
+
+And then she sighed a little sigh of relief, for the bay heaved
+alongside and a hand stretched for her bridle.
+
+Side by side they clattered across the Strand towards the Prinseps
+Ghat, standing just as ostracised and white as the Marble Arch.
+
+Would the two horses crash headlong into the columns, or would the
+Devil yield in time to the strong hand pulling on the bit?
+
+Neither.
+
+Terrified by the shouts of the populace, and the shrill whistling from
+the river, he raced along so close to the left side of the monument
+that Cuxson's boot scratched against the stone.
+
+But as they crashed across the Strand and the sharp incline on the
+other side of the railway lines appeared, Cuxson, knowing that the
+moment had arrived, dropped his reins, and gripping the bay with his
+knees, leant over towards Leonie as she dropped her reins, and
+loosening her grip on the pommel, prepared to break her neck or her
+back or both as she slipped from the saddle.
+
+Then she felt an arm round her waist.
+
+She knew intuitively her rescuer's intention, _but_----!
+
+Would a man's left arm be strong enough to lift her across her horse's
+hind-quarters at the terrific speed they were going, combined with her
+weight?
+
+Would he be able to hold her until his horse slackened speed, or would
+they both overbalance and hurtle to the ground together?  Would there
+be time to stop the horse, or would they all be hurled into the water?
+
+The questions had hardly flashed through her mind when she felt herself
+lifted and swung.
+
+For one petrifying moment the bay, pulled savagely until blood stained
+the bit, reared with its double weight within a yard of the steep
+incline, then, yanked cruelly by its master, swung sideways and came
+down; just as the Devil, striving at the last moment to check his wild
+career, hesitated for one half-second, then, pushed by his own terrific
+impetus, slid over the incline, and turning a complete somersault
+backwards, crashed into the water.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Leonie's scarlet mouth trembled, and her yellow-green eyes gleamed as
+the man she loved pressed both her hands in his against his coat, until
+the high relief of the button was marked upon her skin, even through
+her glove.
+
+"You," she said, so softly that the one note sounded like the chime of
+a temple bell.
+
+"You!" he said, giving her arms a little savage wrench, then letting
+her go as the sound of approaching hoofs heralded the arrival of the
+first of the hunt to be in at the averted death.
+
+A score or more of natives in their vivid colours, which seem so atune
+with all that has to do with love, mattered not at all; but Leonie
+turned and pointed casually to the Devil, enjoying his matutinal bath,
+as the boy flung himself from the discredited polo pony on which he had
+done his best.
+
+He seized both her hands and held them very tightly, then catching
+sight of Cuxson, let them go suddenly.
+
+"Of course!" he said, "of course you would--you lucky beggar!"  Then
+added triumphantly, "But anyway, _I_ told her so!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+  "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Guy Dean, the cheery optimistic lad who worshipped openly at Leonie's
+beautiful feet, and who was seeing the world at the behest of his
+wealthy old father, had been as good as his word.
+
+Bursting with excitement, he hurled himself into his racing-car one
+Sunday morning, about a fortnight after Leonie's hasty ride riverwards,
+and passed like a whirlwind through the fairly empty streets of
+Calcutta and the suburb of Ballygunge to the Jodhpur Club.
+
+She was waiting for breakfast under the trees with some friends,
+discussing the four-some they had just finished, and watching the
+arrival of various cars which were parked, with some difficulty, with
+the others which had arrived earlier.
+
+"Sounds all right," said Cuxson, as he looked with disfavour upon the
+club's breakfast _pièce de résistance_, namely fatty sausages and
+mashed of all things.  "I am beginning to feel quite thrilled.  Let's
+see, it will take us about a day to get to Tiger's Point by launch from
+Kulna, and there we find monkeys, adjutant birds, spotted deer, and
+tigers all ready."
+
+"Don't rot!" said young Dean.  "I've bribed the finest _shikari_ in the
+whole of Bengal to stage-manage the whole thing; he did seem rather
+contemptuous over the _chotar shikar_, as he called it, I must say,
+until I began to juggle with backsheesch, and then he bucked up
+considerably and said he would do his very best to provide sport for
+the mems.  The programme includes a ruined temple but not a tiger,
+'cause he says it would be too risky a job at such short notice; also,
+and the real reason _I_ should say, there hasn't been a tiger seen,
+anyway killed, since one was wounded and caught near that same Hindu
+temple umpteen years ago."
+
+Leonie wrinkled her forehead at the last sentence, and looking up
+caught Jan Cuxson's eyes upon her.
+
+"That sounds _so_ familiar," she said perplexedly, "I----"
+
+"The tiger at the Zoo which we knew all those years ago was trapped
+near a ruined Hindu temple in the Sunderbunds, Lady Hickle," he said
+quietly, watching the curious dilation of the pupils in the greenish
+eyes as he spoke.
+
+"The very one!" broke in young Dean, as he suspiciously eyed a
+proffered curry.
+
+"How did you come to think of the stunt?"
+
+"I ran up against a perfectly top-hole native prince at polo last
+month.  Amongst other things we started talking elephant and
+_bagh_--tiger, you know," laughed the lad, who always seemed to be on
+the point of bursting with high infectious spirits.  "No, take it away,
+I will _not_ eat a cold _chupattie_ of the consistency of a bicycle
+tyre--as I was saying, we talked tiger, and somehow or other he
+suggested a few days' pursuit, through the Sunderbunds, of the spotted
+deer, muntjak or sambur----"
+
+"Neither."
+
+"Well, they're _spotted_."
+
+"Dogs, perhaps."
+
+Ignoring the execrable repartee, the boy turned completely round to
+Leonie.
+
+"By the way, Lady Hickle, if you ever go to Benares, don't forget to
+get off _en route_ and visit the tomb of what's-its-name, it's quite
+near--oh!  I forget--but it's on one of this fellow's father's estates.
+They don't let many people go and see it--afraid, I expect, of paper
+bags but if you _do_ go you'll find an elephant or two hanging about to
+take you to the place in state.  He's, the native prince, got some of
+the finest elephants in the whole of this mosquito-ridden land--makes a
+hobby of them."
+
+"What happened to the original tiger?"
+
+"Noah pushed him into the ark."
+
+The lad grinned, and offered his cigarette to Leonie, who shook her
+head.
+
+"Oh! stop fooling, Dean.  Did a sahib manage to trap the brute, or
+what?"
+
+"Yes! and sent it across to Blighty and shoved it into the Zoo.
+They're frightfully sick about that tiger being in a cage; they
+wouldn't have minded a sahib killing it for the good of mankind it
+seems, but putting it behind bars is an insult to some god, or
+something like that.  Are you any good as a gun, dear lady?"
+
+Leonie smiled at the tardiness of such an important question.
+
+"Fair," she said, refusing an unkempt pot of marmalade as she turned to
+Cuxson.  "I used to pass most of my holidays with the Wetherbournes,
+you know them, don't you?  They were awfully keen on sports, and had a
+rifle-range, but I could beat them any day with a revolver."
+
+"That doesn't matter, Lady Hickle," said the lad blithely.  "All you'll
+have to do'll be to bob up and down in the tiger-grass in the approved
+style; keep your trigger away from the bush, and so as to feel
+thoroughly creepy, your eye out for pugs; which, in case some of you
+don't know, means tiger-tracks, not the dog with the beastly curly
+tail--and--oh, jolly!--here come the Talbots--just in time for the
+_khubber_ which means tiger-news for those whose Hindustani is not as
+perfect as mine.  Mrs. Talbot, don't pass us by, we have plenty of room
+and some superb sausages."
+
+Edna Talbot laughingly sank into a chair next Leonie whom she liked,
+and immediately became enthralled in the discussion.
+
+Honest, sweet little woman, with an honest plodding husband in a native
+regiment, inhabiting the dreary crumbling fort, without a murmur,
+whilst living in hopes of better things to come.  Soft-voiced,
+considerate towards her native servants who worshipped her, one of the
+finest shots in India, and a true upholder of the British Raj in word,
+action, and clothes.
+
+A perfect oasis, in fact, among the desert of her sisters, who storm in
+season and out at their native staff, before whom they likewise show
+themselves in ill-considered négligé, with their unbrushed hair down
+their backs, and their bare feet thrust into the evening shoes of last
+night's dance.
+
+So it came about without any undue fuss that, after surviving the
+excruciating heat of the railway journey, three sahibs, two mem-sahibs,
+and their servants steamed out of Kulna in two launches to Tiger's
+Point, where awaited them the finest _shikari_ in all Bengal, with an
+adequate retinue in which was included a _chukler_ or skin dresser.
+
+And who would notice the look in an ayah's eyes as she wiped her
+beloved mem-sahib's ant-ridden bunk with cotton-waste soaked in
+kerosene, and who on earth would connect the jungle guide with the
+British Museum.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+  "A mighty hunter, and his prey was man!"--_Pope_.
+
+
+It was the second evening and they were nearing the ruined temple.
+
+Walking silently and in single file along a faintly discernible track
+is an eerie proceeding if you are not used to the Sunderbunds.
+
+True, in this jungle there are no serpent-like creepers festooned from
+tree to tree to impede your progress, or luxuriant and rank vegetation
+to hide snakes and other poisonous reptiles; neither is there a canopy
+of thick dark leaves above to obliterate the light of day, or the stars
+at night.
+
+But the space between the crowding sundri trees which predominate, is
+packed with an undergrowth of light shrubs through which you have to
+force and tear your way if you lose the track; and you trip and twist
+your ankle at every step on the abominable sundri breathers which
+thrust themselves through the soil at every inch, and vary in thickness
+from a stick of vermicelli to a good stout bough.
+
+"Look," will whisper your _shikari_ as he sinks silently to the ground;
+and look you do with all your eye-power, and yet fail to see the
+spotted deer gazing at you, motionless from sheer fright, only a few
+yards away in the undergrowth, so at one is the animal's colouring with
+the dappled shadows on the leaves.
+
+What depths of humiliation you plumb when the deer flees to safety
+through the trees and your _shikari_ sighs.
+
+Leonie as a gun had proved a dire, undiluted failure.
+
+As a companion no one could beat her.  Nothing tired her, nothing
+dismayed her.  The terrific heat, the untoward hours and meals, the
+sting of mosquito, and the rip of the thorn left her unmoved.
+
+She and Edna Talbot had gleefully climbed the ladder up to one of the
+two _suapattah_ huts, which are a kind of shelter of leaves built for
+the sundri wood collector upon high platforms near the water, and in
+which they had passed their first vermin-stricken night.  They had
+climbed cheerfully down the next morning without a word of complaint
+about the hours of torture they had endured as they sat at the hut door
+in the light of the moon, whiling away the time until the jungle cocks
+should crow by watching various shapes come down to the creek to drink.
+
+But the first time a deer, hypnotised by fear or curiosity, had stood
+stock-still before her, simply asking for death, Leonie put her gun
+down and shook her head.
+
+"I can't," she said sturdily.  "I simply _could not_ kill except in
+self-defence."
+
+And although young Dean sighed lugubriously over his lady's
+defalcation, Jan Cuxson adored her utterly for her womanliness, and
+translated the remark the head _shikari_ made as he handed back to the
+mem-sahib the rifle he had examined.
+
+"He says he knows that in time of need you would be brave, and would
+have no fear even of a man-eater, but he says that you _must_ carry
+your rifle because you can never tell in the jungle what may be
+awaiting you round the next corner."
+
+As none of the party knew that the temple stood well hidden but quite
+close to the edge of one of the smallest creeks, open only to the
+narrowest native craft, they had no idea they were being taken there by
+a most circuitous route; and the _shikari_ who did know thought that
+the silent guide was doing it purposely in order to give the sahibs an
+opportunity to add yet more to the ever-increasing bag of
+odds-and-ends, also to his backsheesch later on.
+
+They were all longing to get to the ruins; more than desirous for their
+evening meal; aching to remove their boots, and the dust, and other
+evidence of a hard day's tramp.
+
+"We are almost there, mem-sahib," said the very fine old _shikari_ who,
+by the way, is a real personage, as he noticed a certain lack of
+elasticity in Leonie's movements.  "Let us hasten, because at the fall
+of the shadows, all that is evil will come down to the waters, and
+behold! as this jungle is cut across and yet across with water-ways,
+the evil ones may even cross the sahibs' path."
+
+"How much farther is it?"
+
+"Another half-mile of this path, sahib, then through a glade without
+trees, then another mile and we find the outer wall of the temple."
+
+The perfect English came from a small knot of natives difficult to
+distinguish in the shadows.
+
+Leonie swung round and stared, and turning to Jan Cuxson put her hand
+on his arm.
+
+"Funny, isn't it?" she said softly.  "But do you know I am sure I have
+heard that voice before, and all this"--and she waved a hand
+vaguely--"seems so very, very familiar."
+
+The head-man halted them once more at the edge of the clearing.
+
+Strange bare spots these clearings which occur now and again in the
+Sunderbunds, looking for all the world as though they _had_ been
+cleared by man some time or another for building purposes.  Well, who
+knows if that doughty adventurer, Khan Jehan, did not prospect
+thereabouts centuries back.
+
+"We will now place the mem-sahibs in the centre of a widening circle,"
+said the _shikari_ patiently, showing no sign of the detestation in
+which he held all sports-women, and the amount of trouble and anxiety
+their presence always entailed in a _shikar_, however insignificant.
+
+To lose a sahib would be bad enough, but to see a mem-sahib seized and
+carried off before your very eyes, well, by the power of all the gods,
+that would mean ruin if not death; for, being a very wise old man,
+however good the news, he always prepared for the worst.
+
+"I dislike these clearings at the setting of the sun, O defender of the
+poor!" he explained to the major, who kept his wife close and was
+beginning to wish he had not brought her, even if she were far and away
+the better shot of the two.  "The trouble is upon one without even the
+warning of a cracking twig.  Neither have I any love for the temple,
+for behold! one, even a great _guru_ up to within a few moons of this
+day, lived there in worship, making sacrifice to the Black One.  Yet is
+he not there to welcome us.  Maybe he has fallen victim to the _bhoot_
+of the great cat whom he once fed."
+
+Luckily for their peace of mind the sahib log only understood a quarter
+of a man's lament, and did not trouble their heads about ghosts.
+
+"Aye, verily am I bewitched to allow of such tarrying, likewise to let
+such fear enter my head," he muttered to himself, and as a cloak to his
+misgivings sharply ordered ten men to proceed to the centre of the
+clearing in a semi-circle, and there await further orders.
+
+They did as they were ordered, and were standing motionless when
+suddenly without a sound a great striped body leapt straight from the
+shadows of the surrounding trees upon a boy who had out-distanced his
+companions.
+
+The instant double report of Jan Cuxson's rifle deadened the lad's
+horrible screaming and the growling of the wounded beast as it crouched
+flat, almost hidden behind the human body in the undergrowth, with tail
+lashing, and great claws tearing the boy's shoulder, as the rest of the
+terrified coolies ran shouting back to the party.
+
+"Fire, sahib," commanded the _shikari_.
+
+"Can't," tersely replied Major Talbot.  "I shall kill the boy if I do;
+the brute's making a shield of his body.  I'll creep round to the flank
+and----"
+
+"Fire, sahib," urged the native.  "Better to kill the lad as he is
+badly wounded," then added, "Tesch," as Talbot shook his head.  "Stay
+here, sahib, to protect the mem-sahibs, I will creep to----"
+
+"_God_!"
+
+The word simultaneously escaped the three men as they and Edna Talbot
+raised their rifles.
+
+Leonie was walking across the space, neither hastening nor hesitating,
+towards the tiger which crouched, growling softly, with its tail
+sweeping the ground.
+
+Did she hypnotise the brute, or did her supreme courage build an
+invisible barrier between the two?
+
+Who knows!
+
+Anyway she calmly approached within five yards, raised her rifle, took
+deliberate aim, and fired just as, with a hoarse-coughing roar, the
+tiger sprang.
+
+There was the dull thud of a bullet, a snarl, and the animal fell back
+across the boy's body, twitching convulsively.
+
+Without one moment's hesitation, while the rest of the party stood
+helpless owing to her position, Leonie, letting fall her rifle and
+drawing her revolver, walked right up to the writhing brute and fired
+straight into the terrible mouth.
+
+With one supreme effort the tiger reared itself on its hind legs, gave
+a choking, strangled cough ending in a spurt of blood and froth which
+drenched Leonie, and fell back dead; and the entire native staff,
+shouting in wonder and joy, tore across the clearing and prostrated
+themselves, in grateful layers around the girl's heavily booted feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+  "For her house inclineth unto death!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+We lie beneath the mosquito net, we undress behind the purdah, we sit
+on the verandah, or stroll in the compound; we dance, we ride, we eat,
+we sleep, ever heedless of the eyes watching, and of the hidden form;
+but above all of that relentless will which causes some of us
+uncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars,
+to our subsequent disgust and wonderment.
+
+Leonie, with Jan Cuxson behind her, stopped outside the temple door,
+which, hanging upon one hinge, moved slowly to and fro in the night
+breeze.
+
+And at the side of the altar, in the black shadows of the doorway which
+led to the secret places of the temple, a pock-marked native woman,
+draped in an orange coloured _sari_ embroidered in silver, laid one
+hand upon the priest's arm and pointed with the other.
+
+"Behold the Sahib," she whispered with a snarl of hate at the corners
+of her mouth, stained crimson with betel juice.  "He who seeks her in
+wife," she continued, pushing the _sari_ back from about her head so
+that the thirteen silver rings she wore in her crumpled left ear
+tinkled faintly, and her nose-ring of gold set with small but real
+turquoise gleamed dully, "and once wedded she will return across the
+Black Water.  O father of the people, O wise one, I love her and thou
+didst promise."
+
+She suddenly beat her breast, and the heavy silver bracelets jingled
+faintly, then shrank back against the painted wall as a young man, even
+the jungle guide, and beautiful to the verge of unseemliness, stealing
+from the shadows, smote her fiercely across the mouth, and pulled the
+_sari_ roughly over her head.
+
+"Hold thy peace and watch," he whispered, with a swift movement of the
+arm, most suggestive of a cobra uncoiling itself with intent to strike,
+as Leonie turned away from the doorway with a shudder.
+
+She took two steps and stopped irresolute, with the rays of the full
+moon shining upon her upturned perplexed face.
+
+Then she stared down at the myriad things which crawled and hopped in
+and out of the gleaming bones which lay about in little heaps, or
+scattered in ones and twos, even up to the door and into the dim
+interior.
+
+Too absorbed, neither Jan nor Leonie noticed the murmur of voices from
+the far end of the court, nor the reek of the tiger's blood which came
+from her stained dress and the carcase of the dead beast which was in
+the process of being skinned, and around which hovered the native staff
+awaiting the distribution of the coveted tiger's fat.
+
+Which more by faith, than any medicinal property it contains, is
+supposed to work miracles in stressful times of rheumatism, and cattle
+sickness.
+
+Jan Cuxson, trying to grasp and knot together the tag ends of a dawning
+knowledge, stood behind his beloved, patiently awaiting her next
+desire, instead of picking her up in his arms as he should have done,
+and carrying her off to safety, a good wash and a better dinner at the
+other end of the court.
+
+He was surprised when she spoke quickly and below her breath.
+
+"Take me away," she whispered hoarsely as he caught her outstretched
+hands and pulled her fiercely into his arms.  "Take me away, the place
+is evil--evil I tell you--and"--she raised her hand and passed it
+across his face, laughing softly, "I think I am bewitched--something
+is--is--pulling--is------"
+
+She looked back over her shoulder, stared hard for a moment, and then,
+tearing herself free, ran like a hunted deer through the crumbling
+doorway into the blackness of the temple.
+
+"Who fears, O Woman?" whispered the man, whose beauty touched the
+unseemly as he sank to the ground.  "Who fears?"
+
+Half-way up the temple Leonie stopped, standing in a silver pool of
+moonshine which blazed like the blade of a knife through a hole in the
+roof; lighting up the ruined altar, the grass-grown stones, and the
+image of a female deity carved in bas-relief upon a huge block of
+granite.
+
+Nude was the woman carved out of stone, and of so dark a blue as to be
+almost black; with tongue protruding and hair in waving masses, through
+which were thrust four arms; garlanded with skulls she danced wantonly
+upon the body of a man, with two hands raised in blessing, in the third
+a knife, in the fourth a bleeding head.
+
+Kali!  Kali!  Kali!
+
+If only Jan Cuxson had been able to do something, anything, what a mint
+of trouble he would have saved himself and others, but instead, he
+stood rooted to a spot just inside the door, incapable of moving hand
+or foot, held by a force he did not even guess at, and therefore could
+not fight, watching Leonie as she moved slowly forward, as though she
+were walking in her sleep towards the blood-stained altar.
+
+"So will she always come," murmured the old priest as he laid his hand
+caressingly upon his well-beloved pupil.  "So will she always come.
+Love?  Pah! who fears the love of man in the Black One's temple?  Who?"
+
+And there was no answer from the shrouded future.
+
+Leonie stood still, quite still, unconscious of the eyes about her, and
+everything save the terrible problem she was trying to solve.
+
+Then suddenly she cried aloud, and the words, like wings, beat against
+the roof and walls.
+
+"I know!" she cried, "I know!  I know!"
+
+And whirling round towards the spell-bound man, she turned her hands,
+palm downwards, with a wonderful eastern gesture of renunciation, and
+crumpled into a heap before the altar, and the three watching figures
+stole noiselessly back into the secret places of the temple as Cuxson,
+freed, strode hastily up to his beloved.
+
+He gathered up the unconscious girl as tenderly as a woman, oh! a good
+deal more so, and turning her face to his shoulder, carried her out of
+the temple; stopping for a second to hold her more securely in his left
+arm as he bent to pick up something which glittered in the moonlight: a
+piece of orange silk heavily embroidered in silver, for which Leonie
+had ransacked the Old, the New, and the Lal Bazaars; a bit of her
+ayah's _sari_ torn and caught in a sundri breather.  "And she stayed
+behind on the boat," said Jan to himself, with a flash of inspiration
+as he turned the thing over in his hand, and slipped it into his pocket.
+
+And though his heart ached over his beloved's mental and physical
+distress, he inwardly rejoiced at the untoward occurrences of the day
+which had supplied his solid, trustworthy brain with the outline of a
+key to the problem.
+
+Dear, stolid old Jan, who, given the time, could beat anyone at
+unravelling the hardest, hard-tied, knotted problem.
+
+With a tale of sudden faintness he gave her into the care of Edna
+Talbot, who cooed and fluttered over her like the woman she was, in
+spite of her workmanlike appearance and her outrageous craving for a
+big meal.  And she herded the sahibs to the far end of the court, where
+lay the sick man, after the big meal in which Leonie had joined right
+heartily; a little white about the face, truly, and shadowed about the
+eyes, but normal and content, with not the vaguest recollection of what
+had happened after the killing of the tiger.
+
+"Oh! don't be dense," Edna Talbot said quite brusquely when Guy Dean,
+having brutally ignored the suffering native, suggested returning to
+the others.  "You surely don't want to make a triangle."
+
+"Triangle--what!"
+
+"Well, you know the old saying about two being company, don't you?"
+
+"Of course I do--that's where it comes in," replied the lad not over
+lucidly, "_I_ want to make the two!"
+
+The major laughed at the rueful countenance, as he clapped the boy on
+the shoulder.
+
+"You'll get over it all right, old fellow; it's just like inoculation,
+a feeble taste of something which might have been ever so much worse.
+Trust me, you'll get over it!"
+
+"_Never_!" stoutly maintained young Dean as he heaved a stone at
+something which fled across the court, his mental vision failing to
+register a picture of the future in which Jill Wetherbourne, daughter
+of Molly and Jack, occupied the principal position.
+
+Later, Leonie, sitting with Jan Cuxson on a block of fallen masonry,
+smiled sweetly upon the head _shikari_, who, salaaming, prayed her to
+honour him by accepting a little memento of the _shikar_ which had
+terminated so successfully upon the slaying of the tiger.
+
+In his open palm he held two small bones about two and a half inches in
+length, two little superstitious tokens which ensure sons to the woman
+who treasures them, and which, he told her in his broken English, were
+only found in the tiger, one on each side of the chest, unconnected
+with any other bone at all.
+
+"It is a charm, O! Mem Sahib, defender of the poor, which will
+assuredly bring you happiness.
+
+"And may the sons of the sahib grow straight as the pine tree," he
+added slowly in his own tongue, as he felt the sahib's eyes fixed
+steadily upon him.
+
+"What did he say to you, Jan?"
+
+As the shikari turned away Cuxson caught the girl's hands and crushed
+them up against his heart.
+
+"I will tell you some day!"
+
+"Tell me _now_!"
+
+"No! not now!  It is of love that I should have to speak, and in all
+these past weeks you have not let me touch your hand or speak to you of
+love.  You have put a barrier between us, a barrier of a misplaced
+fear, which has grown higher and stronger since I have had to confess
+to failure in finding any trace of your old servant.  India is wide,
+dear, and its villages uncountable, and _I_ am not distressed over the
+empty return of these last months; all that worries me is, that while
+prowling about the Himalayas out of reach of the post, I never knew
+what had happened to you, or that you were in India."
+
+Leonie sighed as she opened her hand and looked at the small bones.
+
+"Tell me now, Jan!" she insisted.
+
+"No!  Leonie, I cannot.  There will be no one near us when I do tell
+you, and except as a souvenir of that very fine old man, you need not
+keep them, because my love is a still greater and surer charm to bring
+you the great happiness they promise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+  "And thou shalt become an astonishment,
+  a proverb, a byword."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+When Leonie returned to Calcutta she found that the tale of her
+courageous act which had preceded her, and of which home and local
+papers had exhausted themselves in praise, had not served to endear her
+to that little white community, which suffers from social myopia, and
+the self-adjusted chains of what it most mistakenly calls caste.
+
+Not likely that the feminine members of Jute, military, railway, or law
+circles _would_ open their arms any wider to this young, and beautiful,
+widowed creature with the mop of naturally curling hair, now that, if
+so minded, she could verbally and positively flap one of the finest
+tiger skins that had ever come out of Bengal in their heat-stricken
+faces.
+
+In fact some of the young ones as they wrestled with the nightly
+problem of their own dank, straight particular bit of woman's glory,
+would doubtless, if questioned, have upheld the Hindu custom of
+completely shaving the widowed head.
+
+Many, in fact, had been the meetings of these younger mem-sahibs in
+bungalows, or flats, at Firpoes, or in clubs, where, under the pretext
+of criticising the latest fashions from overseas, they discussed the
+pros and cons of accepting this person into the haven of their
+Anglo-Indian bosom.
+
+The elder ones kept out of the clatter, having suffered and fought in
+similar crises in their own day as had their mothers, and their
+mothers' mothers before them since the days before the mutiny; being
+moreover resigned to the corrugated appearance of their faces, and the,
+in consequence, perambulatory instincts of their lords.
+
+"Her _undies_," said a woman who, with the excuse of borrowing a book,
+had essayed to spy out the land of Leonie's cabin.  "I saw her running
+ribbons in them--the most _ex_-quisite crêpe de Chine, hand embroidered
+and trimmed with _real_ lace!"
+
+"How _de trop_!" had answered a matron, whose household _linge_ and
+personal _lingerie_ showed complete only in the sections of finger
+napkins and undervests, as is the way of a careless, untidy woman's
+linen stock.
+
+"Well, that's easily understood," chimed in a third.  "After all she
+_is_ trade."
+
+And the no's had carried it.
+
+Wherefore, although in ignorance of the verdict, she did exactly what
+every other woman did, and went where they went, she most certainly did
+_not_ have what one would call a good time.  She loved the Maidan and
+golf at the Jodhpur Club, or Tollygunge, before breakfast; she
+cordially loathed shopping and duty calls; grudged the hours lost out
+of life in the daily afternoon siesta, and took part in dances, bridge,
+dinners, and all the usual monotonous effort to kill time, with the air
+of an indifferent, disgruntled statue.
+
+Gossip was no joy to her, scandal she would not tolerate, and the women
+commenced the task of ostracism by means of half-uttered phrases and
+little invidious smiles; and most men voted her _odd_ owing to a
+certain indescribable barrier which they invariably encountered when
+they approached her over impulsively, and which really did _not_ tally
+with her enticing, bizarre beauty.
+
+Yes! they voted her odd, certainly, but in the secret places of their
+hearts and bungalows some of them would ponder.
+
+Had not the major sahib's bearer curled himself up on the mat beneath
+the bed and gone to sleep, while the major sahib, after the ball, had
+sat in his shirt-sleeves upon that bed until three in the morning; and
+over and over again mentally slid up and down the room with supple,
+slender Leonie in his arms, where, in the earlier hours of the night,
+she had rested seemingly content for one half-second before he had let
+her go under the palms.
+
+And, "Damn it all, she's not a flirt," did not a certain youthful sahib
+who worshipped openly at her shrine exclaim, as he thought, in the
+unpleasantly heated watches of the night, of that moment when she had
+smiled down sweetly into his adoring eyes, as his cheek brushed her
+hand while she was arranging her habit, and he her stirrup leather.
+
+How _were_ they to know that, distracted by an ever-increasing fear,
+and lost in an overwhelming love, Leonie had no more remembrance than
+the man in the moon of the fact that she had danced with the one, and
+smiled upon the other.
+
+It was the final flare of the season in the shape of a ball at
+Government House; one of those mixed massed gatherings to which you are
+invited either on account of your rank, or your unblemished reputation,
+or the fact that you've had the forethought to inscribe your name in
+the visiting-book.
+
+Leonie was standing with Jan Cuxson near an open door under a revolving
+fan which disturbed the outer masses of the hair she had piled
+haphazard upon the top of her small head, catching the great coils
+together with huge pins, and strengthening the entire structure by
+means of a finely wrought, diamond-hilted steel dagger, looted in the
+Mutiny by a not over-punctilious forbear.
+
+"I wonder you don't cut your hair to bits," had once remarked before a
+multitude, an envious dame, whose curls reposed cosily in a box o'
+nights, and who had grave doubts as to the sincerity of Leonie's tawny
+locks.
+
+"I run it through in its sheath," Leonie had replied, pulling the
+sheathed dagger out as she spoke, so that her hair had fallen in a
+jumbled scented mantle all over her, causing the men to put their hands
+in their pockets, or behind their backs, and the women to mechanically
+pat their heads; just as you fidget unconsciously with your veil, or
+the curls above your ear, when someone of your own sex, and far better
+turned-out, happens upon your horizon.
+
+On this night her absurdly small feet made her head look almost top
+heavy, just as the uncorseted small waist emphasised the width of her
+shoulders, and the violet shadows enlarged the opalescent weird eyes
+looking wearily on the scene around her.
+
+Why didn't she go back to England if she hated it all so much?
+
+Because she couldn't!  Because India held her and she waited upon Fate
+as patiently as ever did Mr. Micawber.
+
+"Lady Hickle ought to go to the hills, she's looking absolutely fagged!"
+
+The male voice drifted in through the window upon a pause in the music.
+
+"Well! continuous _sleep-walking's_ not likely to make you look your
+best, is it?"
+
+The damnable giggle at the end of the remark brought a frown to Jan
+Cuxson's face as he picked up somebody's wrap from a chair, put it
+round Leonie and led her unresistingly down the steps into the grounds.
+
+It sounds better to say "grounds" rather than "compound" when speaking
+of Government House.
+
+"I--I _hate_ all this," Leonie said impulsively as she sat down on a
+marble seat.  "I hate India--I--I----"
+
+She flung her head back, and it came to rest upon the man's shoulder,
+and she shivered ever so lightly when he pressed it still further back,
+pinioning her arms so that she could not move.
+
+"Leonie."
+
+The sudden authority in the voice brought a light to the eyes on a
+level with his mouth; she moved unconsciously, and Cuxson suddenly
+letting her go caught both her hands in one of his, pulled her round
+sideways, and jerked them up to his chin, and she laughed softly as she
+fell slightly forward; and laughed even more softly when he crushed her
+back again against him with his hands upon her breast.
+
+Both heedless in their love of the eyes watching, of the hidden form,
+and above all of that relentless will which causes some of us
+uncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars.
+
+If _only_ he had not hesitated, if only he had turned the face to him
+then and there and closed the gold-flecked eyes with kisses.
+
+But instead he held her crushed to the point of agony against him with
+his mouth upon the sweetness of her neck, leaving the gold-flecked eyes
+to open wider, and still wider as they stared straight into the
+shrubbery around, where the flaming poinsettia flowers looked black
+under the stars.
+
+"Beloved!  Leonie, listen----"
+
+"_Don't!_ please don't!"
+
+She pulled herself free and knelt on one knee upon the bench, with both
+hands outstretched against him; and he, not grasping the psychological
+points of the moment, sat down dumbly beside her, instead of mastering
+her physically, or mentally on the spot as it behoved him to do.
+
+Heavens! what fools some men can be with that jungle animal woman
+within their hands.
+
+"Leonie, listen dear, I want you to marry me, dear--soon!"
+
+The words fell upon Leonie's clamouring soul as dismally as the
+raindrops of your childhood fell upon the window-pane when you were
+waiting to start for a picnic.
+
+"You don't know what you are saying!" she replied.  "It is criminal
+even to think of such a thing--mad as I believe I am--mad as I shall be
+when I end in a padded room!"
+
+Her voice was barely a whisper, but it cut like slate on slate, and her
+eyes stared straight ahead as she continued speaking rapidly, almost
+uncontrollably, and yet with a certain air of relief as though glad to
+give vent in words to the horror which pressed upon her brain.
+
+"Although you pretend it is only sleep-walking," she went on, heedless
+of his efforts to interrupt her, "you know perfectly well there is
+something wrong with me.  You know it, so did your father, so does
+Auntie, people here are whispering it.  Yes! they are, they _are_," she
+reiterated, "and they are _right_.  Something more than just being
+frightened by my ayah happened to me in India all those years ago, oh!
+you know it did, I'm under a spell or bewitched--sometimes I have
+a--a--" she struck her forehead with her open hand as she crouched back
+upon the bench like some animal at bay--"a--oh! my God--you see--I
+cannot even say what it is.  Can't you tell me, Jan?  Can't you help
+me?  _You_--you say you love me--you say you have found a clue--for
+pity's sake follow it, follow it and save me--you--you----"
+
+"Leonie, _look_ at me!"
+
+Something in his voice forced her to look at him, and her eyes shone
+like flat pieces of opalescent glass so contracted were the pupils, but
+they widened even as she looked into the steadfast grey eyes, and her
+mouth relaxed into the shadow of a smile.
+
+Good heavens, why didn't he take her in his arms and smother her up
+against his heart, or put a bag over her head, or failing the bag, put
+his hand before her eyes?
+
+What fools some men can be with the woman they love within their reach.
+
+But instead he left her, hurt and humiliated and desolate, to sit half
+crouched by herself, whilst her eyes, against all striving, slowly
+veered round to the shrub.
+
+He held her hand, it is true, whilst he talked, but what good is _that_
+to a frightened woman whose heart is crying for protection, and whose
+body is clamouring to be forced into submission?
+
+"Dear," he said as Leonie stared at the poinsettia bush, "I am on the
+track at last, and in a very little time shall know exactly what
+happened to you all those years ago.  There is only one link missing,
+and that I shall surely find, as I find everything when I set my mind
+to it.  Then the whole thing will be cleared up, and this mysterious
+cloud lifted from you.  Look at me, dear!"  Leonie turned and looked at
+him blankly, and as he continued speaking, slowly, and as though
+against her will, turned her eyes back to the poinsettia bush.  "I want
+you now in your distress.  I want you in the storm as well as in the
+sunshine, dear; I love to see you smile, it would be heaven to _make_
+you smile.  Marry me, beloved, _now_.  Dear, won't you?  Let me lift
+the cloud from my _wife_.  Oh!  Leonie, think of it--my _wife_!"
+
+Leonie answered mechanically, as though she were repeating a lesson and
+had not heard one word of the man's pleading.
+
+"What have you found out?  And what is missing?"
+
+"I have found the woman who was your ayah."
+
+Leonie pulled her hands away, and pushing the hair off her forehead,
+sat quite still listening, but not hearing the music as it floated
+through the night air, watching without seeing the couples as they
+strolled about the grounds.
+
+And then she answered, but without any real interest, although very
+distinctly, shivering slightly as the man put the wrap over her bare
+shoulders.
+
+"Have you?  And who is she, really?  Of course I know her
+name--but--but what do you know about her?  I have had no answer to my
+letters since I've been out here, is the poor thing still working?"
+
+"She's--not exactly working for a living, dear, and she is--is----"
+
+He stopped short with a world of perplexity in his eyes, then went on
+as slowly and mechanically as Leonie had done.
+
+"Perhaps, dear, I--I had--better not say any more until--until I have
+everything quite clear."
+
+And he drew his hand sharply across his eyes as Leonie sighed.
+
+"Very well!" she replied gently.  "Just as you think best."
+
+"Tell me you love me, Leonie, let me be sure of that, let me just hear
+you say it once."
+
+She put out both her hands, and he took them and kissed them.
+
+"Dear, do you count me as _so_ little?  Don't you know, cannot you feel
+that a love like mine endures for ever?"
+
+"Do you still want the little white house behind the white
+wall--Leonie, _do_ you!"
+
+"Oh! Jan!"
+
+"Well, marry me--marry me, beloved, and give me the right to protect
+you--from trouble, and these slanderous, murderous tongues."
+
+Leonie's face was lovely to behold, swept by a wave of colour, and with
+eyes like stars; but she shook her head although a little smile parted
+the crimson mouth.
+
+"No! Jan!  Nothing will make me change.  Not until we know and until I
+am cured.  Do you think I would risk our love, and our happiness?  I
+shall never, never marry you as long as I have this--this longing
+to--this desire to--to--oh! what is it.  Find out what has happened to
+me, find out what I do when I walk in my sleep--just how mad I am, and
+if the madness can be cured, and if it can, _then_ I will--will----"
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+"I will--will----!"
+
+It was no pretty sight to watch her striving to speak, her mouth
+opening and shutting without sound, her hands against her throat.
+
+Then she looked at him suddenly, smiling sweetly, and put both hands in
+his, while he, sick with pain and unconfessed fear, changed the
+conversation abruptly by the grace of understanding.
+
+"I think you ought to go away, Leonie--to the hills--for a change.
+It's getting frightfully hot, why don't you?"
+
+"Yes!--I might--I think I will--I'm so tired of everything--so
+very--very tired!"
+
+"Where to, dear?"
+
+Leonie bent her head a little sideways as though listening, made a
+strange little movement with both her hands, then placed the open palms
+against her forehead and replied:
+
+"To Benares!"
+
+She had barely whispered the words, so quietly did she speak, as the
+poinsettia flowers bent slightly--to a passing breeze--may be!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+  "Dona praesentis cape laetus horae, ac
+  Lingue severa."--_Horace_.
+
+
+Leonie's first long-distance journey was just like other people's first
+long-distance journey in India.
+
+And being of the type which revels in the new and unknown, she loved it.
+
+Who wouldn't!
+
+The seething masses of dusky humanity enchanted her; she delighted in
+the glaring colouring, the clank of the holy man's chains, the
+incessant call of the water carrier and sweetmeat vendor, and the clang
+of iron on iron which announces the train's departure.
+
+She absolutely thrilled on disrobing the first night in the little
+bathroom while her ayah spread her sheets and pillows and blankets upon
+the lower berth; and when her bodywoman disappeared through the door
+leading to the servants' compartment, she lay for a time watching the
+stars, and the glimmer of passing mosque, or temple, or tomb.
+
+Then she laughed aloud in sheer content, wedged Jan Cuxson's box of
+chocolate biscuits safely into the side of the bunk, and turned to the
+side table to look for light literature in the shape of a magazine.
+
+Having acquired the pernicious habit of eating biscuits and reading
+before going to sleep, she frowned upon the discovery that her ayah
+appeared to have left the books upon Howrah Station; and had stretched
+her arm to rap upon the wall to summon the woman, when her eye caught
+sight of a paper volume lying under the opposite bunk.
+
+India is certainly a most dusty land, but a traveller can keep his
+railway compartment and boots spotless by distributing a few _pice_ to
+the dusky, cheery youngsters, who, salaaming, solicit the favour of
+using boot polish, or floor brush, to the mutual benefit of self and
+the sahib.  Leonie, therefore, felt no repugnance when, clutching the
+table with her left hand, she made a long arm and secured the book,
+which proved to be a guide to India's most famous beauty spots.
+
+She turned the leaves casually and laughed.
+
+"Why!  I'd completely forgotten it," she said aloud, turning the book
+sideways to look at an illustration.  "The wonderful tomb Guy Dean
+insisted upon my visiting if I ever went to Benares.  How beautiful!
+Must be the tomb of some ancestor of that young prince he was talking
+about.  Oh! how beautiful, and--oh! how helpful!  I suppose some
+Englishman must have left the book in the train by mistake."
+
+She had picked up a bit of paper which had fallen from the book; a
+rough time-table with directions in English as to the best means of
+getting to the world-famed monument.
+
+"That decides it," she said sleepily as she switched off the light,
+pulled a miniature mosquito net, deftly arranged by the ayah, over her
+head, and the sheet up to her neck.  "We get to the station
+to-morrow--sometime--disembark--put luggage into cloak-room--find
+elephant and--and dâk bungalow--and--oh! almost full moon--how--_how_
+delicious---ride out and see the--the----"
+
+She slept, oblivious of the fact that she was carrying out implicitly
+the programme mapped out for her.
+
+Travelling in India is real sport when the train doors are likely to
+swing open at no given spot, soft-footed natives to enter
+surreptitiously and disappear as quietly upon sight of your open eyes;
+and guards to clamour for your ticket, while a mob collects outside
+your door at the junction to look at the pretty unveiled mem-sahib
+awakened from her slumber by a dignified bearer with his offering of
+_chotar hazri_, which means the thrice blessed early tea-tray.
+
+Her restless spirit was soothed by the rush of the train through the
+endless plain; strange scenes, strange sights wrenched her mind from
+the terrible question everlastingly throbbing in her brain; and her eye
+was not quick enough to distinguish one delicate oval face from
+another, or to notice that at each stopping place her ayah meandered
+down the length of the train to a compartment where, in consequence of
+his high caste and rank, a man sat utterly alone--unconcerned and
+totally oblivious of the screaming, chattering crowd upon the platform,
+of beggars, pilgrims, and _bonâ fide_ native travellers.
+
+True, for one moment at the station where she alighted for the
+world-famed tomb, she glanced back hurriedly at a native who placed
+himself between her and an unsightly epileptic; and she looked back
+once again as her intuition rapped out a message she did not grasp, and
+her ayah suddenly besought her help with the coolies.
+
+A dilapidated tonga, drawn by a pony of the same description, took her
+and her servant to the dâk bungalow, built on a concrete platform in a
+jungle clearing about two miles outside the village.
+
+There she gave carte blanche for the arrangement of the evening trip to
+the guide who materialised serenely, all smiles and extreme deference.
+Bathed, and fed, she had her hair brushed for half an hour by her ayah;
+refused the offer of massage, which process she abhorred, and turned in
+and slept the afternoon away upon her own bedding spread on a charpoy.
+
+Later she bathed again, attired herself in a simple low-cut, white silk
+dress, dined, and wrapping herself in a heavy white Bedouin cloak,
+wedding present from Jill Wetherbourne, who had got it from her
+godmother in Egypt, seated herself on the verandah to await the arrival
+of whatever means of locomotion the guide had chosen to take her to the
+tomb.
+
+And down the jungle path loomed the shape of a great elephant, moving
+at a gentle shuffle but an almost incredible speed.
+
+Without audible instructions it stopped in front of the verandah, threw
+back its trunk, twined it gently about the middle of the _mahout_ or
+driver, lifted him from his seat behind its ears and placed him on the
+ground; then on a word, trumpeted shrilly in greeting to Leonie.
+
+"Oh!" said she as she almost sprang from her chair in delight.  "Oh!"
+
+The _mahout_ salaamed, standing in the moonlight at the animal's head.
+
+He made a vivid eastern picture, dressed as he was from head to foot in
+white, with two pleated side-pieces to the turban, hanging in suchwise
+as to conceal half the face; and the guide, who had been squatting on
+the edge of the path, also salaamed, smiling in glee at the mem-sahib's
+delight.
+
+"Behold, mem-sahib," he said, "is the elephant even Rama, the pearl of
+the prince's stables."  His English was not quite as intelligible as
+these printed words, but Leonie made shift to understand.
+
+"I have never seen such a beautiful elephant," she said, walking up to
+the great beast, followed by the guide, the ayah and the bungalow
+factotum.
+
+The mem's statement was quite within the range of possibility seeing
+that her elephant lore had been gathered from the Zoo and other
+low-caste specimens with their straight backs, mean tails, and long
+stringy legs.
+
+"Does the--the _mahout_ speak English, because my Hindustani is not
+very good.  I would like to have the--the beauty of the animal
+explained to me, and why it has its face and body painted; and why does
+he, the _mahout_, I mean, wear those side pieces to the turban, they
+are very unusual."
+
+A moment's pause, during which the _mahout_ stood like a rock, and then
+the guide, shuffling his feet, answered to the effect that the driver
+could not speak English, but that her humble servant would translate if
+the mem-sahib would deign to listen to his mean speech; that the man
+was the prince's best beloved--_mahout_, he added after a second's
+pause, and that the side pieces were part of the uniform worn by the
+prince's head-mahouts.
+
+Not a bit of which information was true, _mais que voulez vous_?
+
+So they all walked round Rama the beautiful, the guide translating the
+soft Hindustani into lamentable English.
+
+Rama, it seemed, was a _koomeriah_, a royal or high-caste elephant, and
+still a youth, being but forty years of age, _vide_ his ears.  His
+height was ten feet at the shoulder, and would the mem-sahib note the
+perfect slope of the back down to the beautiful, long, feathery tail.
+Also the massive chest and head, with the prominent lump between the
+eyes so bright and kind, and full of knowledge.  Notice also the deep
+barrel, and short, so very short, hind legs, the heaviness of the
+trunk, the plump cheeks which would indeed grace a comely elephant
+maiden; count the eighteen nails upon the lovely feet, and place her
+hand upon the soft skin which fell in folds about the tail.
+
+Leonie did as she was bid and ran her hand also down the nearest
+magnificent tusk, with tip cut off and ringed about the middle with
+bands of gold inlaid with precious stones.
+
+"Perfect ivory," continued the guide, "five feet in length with tip,
+curving upwards with the curve of the sickle moon, and sloping slightly
+from each other as though in anger."
+
+Leonie smiled at the guide's verbal imagery, and put her hand upon a
+cream coloured mark near the base of the broad trunk.
+
+"Why, I thought it was paint!" she said, speaking over her shoulder to
+the _mahout_, who, unperceived, held a fold of her white cloak in his
+hand.  "This is paint, surely," she added, running a finger-tip down
+the vermilion and white lines which covered the great beast's face and
+sides.
+
+It seemed that the yellowy-white blotches raised the animal's value
+above that of sacksful of rubies, and the painting of the face and
+sides served two purposes; one to render it easier for the animal to
+find favour in the eyes of the gods, the other to bring about the same
+result in the eyes of man; even as does woman when she accentuates the
+night blackness of her eyes with antimony; and the slenderness of her
+finger-tips with henna.
+
+In state procession it seemed that Rama the perfect carried a gold and
+jewel encrusted howdah upon his beautiful sloping back; that what was
+left uncovered of his anatomy was hung with a net of silver, with
+tassels of pearls; that strings of seed pearls were entwined in the
+glorious meshes of hair in the beautiful tail; and that his nails were
+manicured, bracelets of golden bells hung about the ankles, and buckets
+of perfume poured into his bath.
+
+"The _mahout_ has placed the humble cushioned seat this night upon the
+back, mem-sahib, so that nothing shall be between the mem-sahib and the
+light of the moon."
+
+Leonie gave orders that a succulent cake full of currants and flavour
+should be brought forthwith from her hamper, and having pushed it as
+far back into the mouth as possible, where it was demolished to the
+accompaniment of the most disgusting masticatory noises, laughed aloud
+when the elephant stood on its short hind legs to show its
+appreciation, and said thank you by means of a soft purring sound in
+the throat.
+
+The process of getting to the knees reminded Leonie somewhat of a
+sailing vessel she had seen rolling in a rough sea, but she settled
+herself comfortably in the cushioned seat and waited with glee for the
+_mahout_ to get into position upon the animal's neck and order it to
+rise.
+
+"What is he waiting for?" she asked, as he made no movement.
+
+"He wishes to know where the ayah is to sit," answered the guide.
+
+"_Ayah_!" said Leonie, and laughed gently.  "But I am going alone!"
+
+The _mahout_ said something swiftly.
+
+"The way is many miles through the jungle, mem-sahib; there is no dâk
+bungalow, no people, the mem-Sahibs and also the sahibs go always
+accompanied."
+
+"I am going alone," said Leonie quietly.  "Tell the _mahout_ to get up."
+
+Upon a word of command the elephant got to its feet, and raised one
+knee; the _mahout_ placed one foot upon it and swung himself up to his
+seat upon the short neck, said something to the elephant, who moved off
+up the jungle path, while the servants salaamed deeply to Leonie, and
+again even more deeply in the direction of the elephant's head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+  "Some little talk awhile of me and thee
+  There seem'd--and then no more of thee and me."--_Omar Khayyam_.
+
+
+The elephant trumpeted before the gate.
+
+The two halves of the door opened from within, clanged against the
+sides, and the _durwans_ in scarlet and silver bent almost double as
+they salaamed before the white woman who passed under the red-stone,
+centuries-old gate upon the back of Rama the Great and Perfect.
+
+The elephant knelt and Leonie stepped on to the marble pavement,
+placing her hand for one instant upon the _mahout's_ arm to steady
+herself.
+
+She looked up and down the double line of cypress trees and gave a
+little cry, which was almost one of pain, at the sight of the glory
+before her; and pressing her hands above her thudding heart, longed
+with all her soul for the man she loved and had denied.
+
+For a moment she stood absolutely still, the heavy cloak swinging
+gently in the slight breeze, then walked down the steps, and like some
+ghost passed noiselessly beside the lily strewn water tanks towards the
+marble, wondrous Tomb.  Madhu Krishnaghar, waiting until she was well
+out of earshot, spoke to the elephant, bringing it to its feet, and
+gave a sharp order to the keepers of the door, which caused them to
+speed from the scene as fast as their feet would carry them towards the
+village where they had been commanded to stay until sunrise, leaving
+the girl, a prey probably to that inexplicably sensuous feeling which
+the desolation, and beauty, and pity of this place arouses in _some_,
+alone with the man who loved her as men love in the East.
+
+He followed her slowly beside the water tanks, and absorbed in his love
+and the joy of being alone with her, failed to catch the sharp call of
+apprehension when Rama, as faithful as a dog, and far more intelligent
+than many humans, rapped the ground smartly with the end of his trunk.
+
+Having been told by his beloved master to stand where he was until his
+return, and being obedient even unto death, he did not move; but he
+eyed the form which had slipped in through the gates with dislike, and
+shuffled his feet in distrust as the man disappeared behind the cypress
+trees.
+
+It was only a foolish curiosity-bitten _shudra_; a wretched member of
+the lowest and most servile class, who, passing on his way to his
+miserable hovel, had noticed the gate open at the untoward hour of
+midnight, and the absence of the ferocious _durwans_.
+
+His low caste, which is the least of all, had prevented him, up to this
+day, from entering what he thought must surely be paradise; and now he
+took the risk and slipped in, not only stricken with curiosity, but
+obsessed with a desire to tell a wonderful tale to his patient wife and
+four sons, who, because they were _his_ sons, were doomed to remain of
+the lowest servile caste; as would be their sons far, oh! far beyond
+the third and fourth generation.
+
+How was he to know that a woman with unveiled face was visiting the
+tomb at midnight, or that she was beloved by his master whose word was
+life, or death, to those who served him.
+
+Leonie passed through the silver gates into the tomb, and stood beside
+the marble, flower-strewn sarcophagi, which lie side by side, and over
+which, day and night, hangs a lighted lamp.
+
+She did not move when a whispered golden sound fell gently through the
+shadows.  Like a cobweb thread, so fine it was; like a thread of gold,
+so sweet it was; rising and falling, to rise again in one throbbing cry
+of love, pleading, insisting, despairing.
+
+The echoes caught and held it in the dim corners of the marble cupola,
+and answered cry with cry until the place seemed full of the sobbing of
+lost souls.  Back and forth, at the girl's feet and around her head,
+surging over the dead lovers, beating against the walls and roof, to
+die away, sobbing, sobbing like a weary child.
+
+Leonie, transfixed with ecstasy, stretched out her hands to catch the
+dying notes; and for that infinitesimal fraction of a second, when the
+golden sound crossed the boundary of human sense, felt as though she
+stood upon the edge of eternity.
+
+She turned to see the driver of elephants standing like a bronze statue
+outside the doorway; but speak she could not in that dim place fragrant
+with the loves of the past, neither could she support the divine pain
+alone, and picking up a rose and a sprig of bay from the marble, tucked
+them into the V of her bodice and walked out.
+
+But she did speak, to remonstrate, in the sweetest, most imperfect
+Hindustani in the world, when the man followed her at a quite
+respectful distance.
+
+"It is not safe for the mem-sahib to go alone," he answered.  "A wild
+animal, a man, a snake, might be in hiding.  The mem-sahib should have
+been accompanied by her guide."
+
+Thus spoke Madhu Krishnaghar, who had not one evil thought about, nor
+intent towards her, and who, having pushed the mandates of his religion
+into the background for this one night, was living in the intoxication
+of the actual moment.
+
+Leonie walked round the outside of the marble dream bathed in
+moonlight, occasionally stopping to ask a question of the man who
+followed.
+
+"Is it the tomb of an ancestor of the present prince?" she inquired
+haltingly.
+
+"No! mem-sahib! look at the lettering in black marble inset in the
+white; right round the tomb run those verses from the Koran.  A
+Mohammedan emperor built it--_I_ am a Hindu," the pause was scarcely
+noticeable as he added quietly, "as is everyone upon the prince's
+estates."
+
+She stopped in front of one of the four towers which stand at each
+corner of the marble terrace, and looked upwards.
+
+"I am going up," she said.
+
+"Nay! mem-sahib.  These towers are climbed only with a guide and a
+lamp.  They are not clean, they are not safe.  A snake, a pariah dog, a
+man might be on the stairs which wind round and round, and are as black
+as a night of storm."
+
+Leonie had climbed the few outer steps and was standing inside the
+door.  Not once had the untowardness of the whole proceeding struck
+her, nor had she given a thought to the fact that the man with her was
+a low-caste elephant driver, not fit to touch her shoe-string.
+
+She made no reply, and disappeared into the darkness.  You can see
+fairly well up to one half of the tower, then pitch blackness surrounds
+you, and you begin to feel cautiously with hands and feet for that
+reason; also because just about here your head begins to whirl owing to
+the stifling atmosphere, and the architect's corkscrew design.
+
+She had no idea that the man, alarmed for her safety, was following
+her, and she stopped and gasped near the top, wondering how much
+farther she had to go, and almost wishing that she had not started; and
+so black was it that she did not even see the white turban which was on
+a level with the step upon which she stood.
+
+Then there was a glimmer of light and more.  Presently it grew quite
+light and she staggered up the last few steps, and reeled on to the
+small round cupola of the tower unprotected by rails.
+
+Well for her was it that Madhu, divining the danger, raced up the last
+steps in one bound, reached her as she stood swaying on the edge, and
+drew her quickly, roughly back into his arms, where, forgetting his
+role of servant, his religion, caste and colour, he held her safe and
+crushed against his heart.
+
+She, with her eyes shut and her head spinning, remained there without
+understanding one word of what the man was saying.
+
+"And having held thee in my arms, how am I to let thee go," he
+whispered, with his mouth near the scented masses of her hair.  "Nay, I
+cannot, thou white, wonderful flower in a land of drought.  Behind the
+purdah will I place thee, hidden from all eyes but mine.  Thy
+body-woman shall not touch thee, for _I_ will be thy servant, and _my_
+hands will draw the lace from about thy bosom, and _my_ hands will
+perfume thee, and my love shall encompass thee until thou swoon upon
+the ground even at _my_ feet.  Waiting for thee I have known no woman,
+and I will have no wife but thee, and many sons shalt thou bear me.
+Yea! each year shall see thee bowed beneath the fruit of love, for I
+will not spare thee.  And thou shalt be honoured before all men; a high
+estate shall be thine, and a flood of jewels and gold and grain shall
+flow at thy small feet which I shall kiss.  And thou _shalt_ veil thy
+face, for I would kill him, _torture_ him who looked upon thee."
+
+Leonie opened her eyes and stared at the shimmering whiteness of the
+tomb, and she smiled and did not move, for the witchery of the full
+moon had fallen upon her.
+
+"Red!" she whispered, pointing to the dull glow of dead bodies burning
+somewhere near, and laughing till her teeth flashed between her scarlet
+lips.
+
+The man searched with one hand and found a small flat jewelled case in
+the folds of his turban, and opening it, with the long, deft fingers
+took out two pellets.
+
+He watched her as she lay upon his arm, and suddenly forced the pellets
+between her teeth, and himself laughed, as she grimaced at the bitter
+taste but swallowed them.
+
+He had not the slightest intention of doing her any harm, but with the
+whole of his vividly mature brain and virgin body, he delighted in the
+effect of the drug upon the woman he loved.
+
+There was no doubt about it that she suddenly awoke to the passion of
+the man looking down upon her, and responded to it.
+
+Wave after wave swept her from head to foot, causing her body,
+untrammelled by whalebone, to tremble against his, and he loosened the
+white cloak and let it fall, holding her pressed to him in her thin
+silk dress, laughing down at her, delighting in her eyes, her mouth,
+her throat.
+
+Handsome men are an everyday sight in India, but this man was as the
+gods, and Leonie, beautiful, drugged Leonie, looked at him from the
+corner of her eyes as looks the wanton, and laughed.
+
+"I will not kiss thee," he whispered, watching the colour sweep her
+face at his words, and smiling at the thudding of the heart beneath his
+hand.  "Nay, I will not bruise thee nor cause thee blemish until the
+purdah hangs between us and the world.  Look not at me thus-wise, and
+lift not the glory of thy lips, for I will not seize thee as a beggar
+seizes upon the _pice_.  I am thy king and thy slave, and I will carry
+thee to the gate.  Nay, move not thy body for fear I throw thee upon
+the ground and set my seal upon thee.  Lie still! and yet--why not, why
+_not_! perchance _has_ the hour struck."
+
+The man was crazed with love, and the girl intoxicated with the drug,
+and they were perched up there above the world alone, in the stillness
+of the Indian night.
+
+He hastily wrapped her in the cloak, and taking her into his arms, hid
+her face against his shoulder, and stood for a moment staring out
+towards the spot from whence had come the ill-omened jackal cry.
+
+"Not yet," he whispered.  "Not yet!"
+
+Sure-footed as a goat he carried her down the winding stairs out into
+the moonlight, and across the terrace, and up the marble steps, and
+placed her upon the wide marble seat, and sat sideways upon it behind
+her, unwitting of the miserable wretch who watched from between the
+cypress trees.
+
+Leonie sat quite still until the mystery of the place, or whatever it
+is, entered into the innermost recesses of her being; and she held out
+her arms to the light burning day and night above the dead lovers, and
+sobbed.
+
+Madhu Krishnaghar laid his hand upon hers on the cold marble of the
+seat, and lost himself in ecstasy at the tears which welled into the
+strange gold-green eyes and fell, then opening the collar of the white
+linen coat, he lifted a necklace of priceless pearls over his turban
+and passed it over the girl's head, holding it lightly until one end
+had slid down into the scented laces of her bosom where lay a cat's-eye
+on a golden chain.
+
+"Thou white doe," he said, "thou virgin snow," and added fiercely,
+"give me the rose from above thy heart, that I may press it to my
+couch."
+
+Obediently Leonie gave it, faded and warm, and looked at him with a
+strange little gleam of anger in her eyes; and he, understanding that
+the effect of the drug was passing, and that wrath maybe would follow
+love, led her by the hand down through the double row of cypress trees
+towards the gate.
+
+Alas! a twig cracked under the wretched _shudra's_ foot, snapping with
+the report of a pistol in the stillness of the night; and the man,
+feeling the hands of his gods upon him, fled like a hunted hare towards
+the gate.
+
+Madhu Krishnaghar, with his face one blaze of fury, stood still and
+called.
+
+"Rama," he called.  "Rama, hold," and as the wretched creature,
+forgetting the animal in his fear, sped past him, Rama curled his trunk
+swiftly about him and jerked him to a standstill.
+
+Useless to strive against that strength; useless to fight against the
+gods or raise his voice in shrieking prayer.
+
+For had he not looked upon the unveiled face of his master's woman.
+
+Slowly Madhu Krishnaghar led Leonie up the marble steps and stopped.
+
+"Thou dog," he said gently, "thou low-caste dog!"
+
+Then he drew Leonie into his arms and covered her completely with the
+heavy coat.
+
+But the man, submitting to fate with the terrible resignation of the
+East, let fly one last poisoned arrow.
+
+"The dog goes to his death," he cried.  "But behold, the shame of the
+lord is great, for have not the eyes of the low-caste dog rested upon
+the woman's face."
+
+"_Usko marro_!  Kill quickly!" thundered the son of princes, and turned
+indifferently away.
+
+But even as the elephant threw the man upon the ground, and placing his
+foot upon his head, tore him in twain, Leonie wrenched herself free,
+and flinging up her arms to the moon, laughed and laughed until the
+night echoed and re-echoed with the horrible sound, stopping only when
+the smothering folds of the cloak were thrown about her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+  "And thou shalt grope at noonday."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Jan Cuxson, hurt to the quick at Leonie's refusal to marry him, also at
+her rejection of his offer to accompany her upon her travels, shut his
+hurt away, and set his mind to the completion of his task.
+
+His suspicions had been aroused by the finding of that orange and
+silver scrap of _sari_ near the temple, when the ayah had presumably
+been left miles behind on the launch; and fully realising the futility
+of employing the methods of the West against the subtlety of the East
+he decided to pit native craft against native cunning.
+
+The only result of the investigation, however, was that Leonie's
+present ayah had been traced back via the Ranee's house to the days
+when she had been in the service of the Colonel-Sahib Hetth, V.C., but
+beyond that was a blank wall.
+
+She had suddenly left the Ranee's service to become body-woman to
+Leonie; without a single reference to the time when she had been nurse
+to Leonie as a baby.
+
+Who was keeping her silent, and why?  And what was she doing, and who
+was she with in the deserted temple in the jungle?
+
+Whose tool was she?
+
+Certainly not the Ranee's.  She was wrapped up in her duties toward the
+fast ageing Rajah, and her only son, who seemed much the same as other
+sons of princes.
+
+Having finally decided that the answer to the problem lay in the
+temple, to the temple he decided to go, more with the intention of
+having a look round than with any definite plan.
+
+The decision was made with the fixed though unspoken determination that
+if the solving of the problem should involve a sojourn of ten years in
+India, for ten years he would remain.
+
+He hired a guide and a coolie, both of whom looked exactly like any
+other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking
+being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not
+wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means
+of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats
+unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks
+of the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River to Kulna.
+
+If you want a few days' rest, or time in which to unravel a knot, pray
+take that means of locomotion; you can be dropped anywhere into a
+_nukur_ or native boat which will deposit you for a few annas on any
+island you choose, but don't do it if you are in a hurry, or are filled
+with a desire to see the lesser creeks, and the quite small ones, where
+tigers are supposed to sit in rows upon the water's edge, monkeys to
+swing across the water by means of the creepers interlacing the dark
+and dismal trees, and crocodiles to lie in tumbled masses waiting to be
+turned into portmanteau, dressing-case, or shoes.
+
+Cuxson's method and brain were rather like his gait; as he had said in
+Rockham cove, he was _slow_!  He could not and never had, even at
+Harrow, been able to run a hundred yards without becoming most
+uncomfortably blown; but he could walk anyone to death at a set
+plodding steady tramp, accomplishing twenty miles without turning a
+hair; while after a series of terrific spurts, and enforced periods of
+rest, his companions would give up dishevelled, sweating, and
+unpleasantly mortified miles away from the desired goal.
+
+Problems, mathematical or medical, were treated in just the same way.
+The more brilliant of his fellow-students would seize upon a pen, fill
+reams of paper and slap the result down triumphantly at the end of an
+hour, to find themselves later, and again with mortification at the
+bottom of the list, or not on it at all; whereas Cuxson, after hours of
+searching here and there in the convolutions of his grey matter, would
+light on a thread, a grain or a speck of dust which he would proceed to
+turn inside out, or tear to pieces; the outcome of which process would
+be printed at length in the _Lancet_ or some such-enlivening journal.
+
+So he lay on the long chair in the corner reserved for sahibs, and was
+not too uncomfortable, nor in any way uneasy as to the result of his
+investigations, although all that he had to build his hopes upon was
+the word of a native, and a piece of orange silk picked out in silver
+with the dust of a sundri breather adhering, which lay in his
+pocketbook with a ring of seaweed, and some glistening strands of tawny
+hair.
+
+The serang, meanwhile, parleyed with certain gatherers of _golaputtah_
+which is a special palm leaf growing in the Sunderbunds for the express
+purpose of thatching boats and _suapatti_ huts; and having discussed
+the ins and outs, and pros and cons of the situation with every male
+upon the boat, had transferred the sahib with his guide and coolie to a
+native boat, after a gratifying give and take in silver rupees which
+are so much nicer to handle than dirty notes.
+
+And an old priest made sacrifice of a black kid unto his god, having
+been apprised in the mysterious native way of the approaching arrival
+of the last person on earth he wished to see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+  "What hath night to do with sleep?"--_Milton_.
+
+
+"What a nuisance!"
+
+Leonie turned on her bed and frowned through the chick at the two girls
+who had ensconced themselves in long chairs on the verandah outside her
+bedroom.
+
+Broad-minded and big-hearted, she had tried to overcome the intense
+irritation which the Eurasian manner of speech invariably aroused in
+her.  Some get accustomed in time to the parrot-like monotony; some
+don't; and to the end of his days the young, immaculately groomed and
+turned-out assistant in Hamilton's will wonder why the beautiful girl
+with gold-flecked eyes had suddenly frowned, and placing the trifle
+intended for a wedding present upon the glass counter, had left the
+shop with an appallingly inadequate excuse.
+
+Fortunately for him the pukka European has not been endowed with the
+gift of hearing himself speak as others hear him.
+
+Like the broken flight of maimed birds over a lawn in the process of
+being mown is the Eurasian speech and intonation; with the inevitable
+dip in the middle, the rise at the end of each sentence, and the
+ceaseless clipping of syllables.
+
+And Leonie frowned as she lay under the mosquito netting awaiting the
+warning of the dressing bell, and even felt thankful to a crow which
+suddenly perched itself on the top twig of a fir tree, and shrieked its
+condemnation of the sunset, the star just above its head, and the
+chatterers in the chairs.
+
+In an effort to break through the overpowering lethargy which lately
+had fallen upon her at odd moments of the day, she lifted herself on to
+her elbow, only to sink listlessly back on the very hard bed.  After
+all, why worry over problems to which there seemed no answer?  Why fret
+over the silence of the man she loved when she had curtly refused his
+offer of companionship; for there always comes a time when mere man,
+subjected to the unsatisfactory daily menu of snubs and refusals, tense
+moods, and moody silences, will refuse it, and clear for a diet, which,
+although somewhat lacking in salt and spice, will have the advantage of
+being substantial, therefore satisfying.
+
+Also there was no doubt about it the social ostracism of Calcutta had
+followed her to Benares; she had not failed to notice that the people
+packing the hotel looked at her furtively, smiling spasmodically when
+caught in the act, and seemed ill at ease when left alone with her.
+
+Another thing which annoyed her intensely was the habit she had
+developed of peering into the shadows of the compound at odd moments,
+and listening for a sound she could not even describe to herself, and
+which she never heard; while through the blazing hours of the day, and
+the stifling hours of the night, like a black thread woven into a
+tissue of gold, ran the ghastly fear which had been with her since the
+day when a schoolgirl had taunted her, and to which she had given voice
+near the poinsettia bush to Jan Cuxson.
+
+She had _done_ Benares en tourist.
+
+She had watched the worshippers thronging the Praying Steps at dawn
+from the deck of a boat rowed slowly up and down the holy river; had
+enticed the monkeys with gram from the niches in the Doorga Kond, the
+world-famed Monkey Temple; gazed fascinated and with reverence at the
+firing of the pyres about the dead bodies shrouded in white or red
+according to their sex upon the Burning Ghats; averted her eyes
+steadfastly from the bloated bodies in process of being torn to pieces
+by crows or vultures as they floated on the soft bosom of Mother Ganges
+to everlasting peace; and had passed restful hours in the wonderful
+ruins of the Buddhist temple some miles outside the city.
+
+She had done all that others have done and will do, and still she
+waited, doing absolutely nothing and with no excuse for loitering in
+the hotel with its long broad verandah; learning much of the city's
+history from the charming manager who walks with a stick, and has the
+blue-green-brown shadow of the peat bog in his eyes.
+
+"Shoo, you brute!" said one, of the girls on the verandah, and
+continued speaking when the crow had flown farther afield.  "Well, the
+manager says we are not to go to the bazaar to-night on any account!"
+
+"Why ever not?"
+
+"Says there's a row or something brewing--something to do with the
+natives and their religion!"
+
+The girl with the reddish-brown hair put a final polish to the nails,
+which damned her everlastingly, as she spoke condescendingly of one
+half of her forbears; while the other, a _bonâ fide_ blonde as to hair,
+half opened the long sleepy brown eyes, which, combined with the shape
+of her silken-hosed leg from ankle to knee branded her even before she
+uttered a word.
+
+"Don't believe it," the latter replied.  "It's a do on the part of the
+guide to get more backsheesh; you simply can't trust these natives a
+yard.  I'll tell you what, though," she sat up with an energy
+surprising in one of her kind, "let's ask Lady Hickle.  She's _such_ a
+pet, and there's _nothing_ she doesn't know about the place, she's been
+here a whole month."
+
+Followed a short spell of peace in which Leonie raised her hand to
+summon her ayah squatting on the dressing-room matting, and put an end
+to the incessant chattering.
+
+But bolts do not wait upon the clapping of hands before they crash down
+upon your defenceless head from out the blue, and the one destined for
+her from all time hurled itself at her from out a wispy cloud of
+Eurasian gossip.
+
+"Oh! but we can't do that!" announced the peevish high-pitched voice.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Ma says we're not to be with her alone.  There's all sorts of weird
+tales going round about her.  Thought you knew.  They say she killed
+her first husband, and tried to stab someone in Calcutta with that
+dagger she wears in her hair; that she lives on the q.t. with a
+native--he gave her that gorgeous necklace of pink pearls; has been
+seen with him in the compound after dark--Ma watched--and she's
+positively dotty at the full moon.  Fact!  Mrs. Oswald told Ma that
+there's no doubt that she's quite mad at times."
+
+The blonde slid her slightly bowed, silken-hosed limbs to the ground,
+her face the colour of greenish putty through the superstitions of one
+half of her forbears.
+
+"Let's go and find your ma!" said she.  "It's full moon to-night."
+
+And after their departure Leonie sat very still on the edge of the bed,
+with one foot tucked under her, and the other bare and very perfect
+stretched down to the matting; the netting fell in folds behind her,
+and her eyes stared into the corner where a one time nameless, unshaped
+spook, having taken form and name at last, stood mouthing at her from
+the shadows.
+
+She started violently and looked down when her body-woman touched the
+arched instep with her wrinkled, dusky hand.
+
+Keenly intuitive, as are all the peoples of India, she had crept
+noiselessly across the matting and crouched at Leonie's feet in her
+desire to be near the beloved child in her distress.
+
+There was a heaven of love and a world of indecision in the monkey
+eyes, but not a trace of fear when the beloved child suddenly twisted
+the _sari_ from about the sleek head and pock-marked face and shook her
+violently by the shoulder.  Instead she rocked herself gently to and
+fro, crooning in the toneless cracked voice of the native woman who
+tends a white child and loves it.
+
+"Missy--baba, it's ayah!" went the tuneless song, "it's ayah--it's
+ayah--be not afraid, baba--baba--it's ayah--ayah--ayah."
+
+Over and over again she repeated the words with her eyes on the
+terror-stricken face above her.
+
+"Why!" said Leonie, frowning till her straight brows met as she pressed
+the palms against her temples, "why, you used to sing that in--in--you
+used to call me--in the name of all the gods, woman, tell me--help me,
+oh! help me to understand!"
+
+Great tears stood in the native woman's eyes, and she opened her mouth
+to speak, then turned her head slightly and looked towards the chick
+which had rustled; scowled, and bowing her head ever so little placed
+the palm of her hand against her forehead for an instant.
+
+"Won't you or _can't_ you speak?" said Leonie almost roughly, her voice
+ending on a sharp note which changed to a little bubbling uncanny laugh
+as she sat back on the bed holding her ayah at arm's length.
+
+She took no notice of the dressing-bell when it clanged throughout the
+building, nor of the swish of the water as it was heaved into the tin
+bath in the bathroom, but sat on with the plaits of her hair coiled
+like snakes on each side of her, and the whiteness of her bare arms and
+shoulders shining in the light from the bathroom.
+
+"Ayah! ayah!" she said in a dull sing-song sort of way, "do you know
+what they say?  Do you know what they think?  They think, they say I'm
+_mad_!  And do you know I think I am.  Sometimes there's the sound of
+drums in my brain, great big drums beaten by giants, and sometimes the
+sound of bells.  And the sound of the bells is hot, it burns great
+scars on--on--and there are hours for which I can't account, and cuts
+and bruises on my feet and--and----"
+
+Very quietly the native woman rose, and passing one arm behind the bare
+shoulder drew a hand across the low broad forehead, singing in her own
+tongue so softly as to be almost inaudible.
+
+"I dream of blood, ayah," went on Leonie, "so often--so often--it is
+warm to the fingers and drops so--so slowly--and----"
+
+The ayah pressed her fingers a little as she drew them behind the ears
+to the nape of the neck, and raised her voice ever so slightly in the
+Vega chant she had learnt as a lullaby.
+
+"The women," she crooned, "that are lying on a bench, lying on a couch,
+lying in a litter; the women that--are--of--pure odour--all--of them
+we--make--sleep!"
+
+The cracked voice sank suddenly as her child's face softened and
+relaxed, but the dark hand passed to and fro ceaselessly above the eyes
+and down behind the ears.
+
+"It walks so softly, ayah--it's--it's in that--corner now--look! can't
+you see--its--its eyes--and the small--light--and she is--she is
+calling--calling--just as she--has--has--always----"
+
+The tawny head fell backwards on to the white _sari_ picked out in
+coloured silk, pulling it away from the head, and the marriage dower of
+thirteen silver earrings in the left ear, and the turquoise studded
+nose ring which shone dully in the dim light.
+
+"And it's dark--it's--quite----"
+
+Leonie slept, and her neighbours in the dining-room went through
+certain anatomical gymnastics such as lifting the eyebrows, shrugging
+the shoulders, and pursing the lips, all of which are supposed to
+denote suspicion; while the native woman kept guard behind the reed
+blind through which she watched a figure clothed in spotless white
+flitting among the shadows of the trees.
+
+When those shadows marked the hour of midnight she sprang quickly to
+her feet.
+
+With one violent uncontrollable movement, Leonie had risen to her knees
+with the tips of the fingers of one hand against her lips and her eyes
+slanting sideways towards the window near her bed.
+
+"Hush!" she whispered.  "Listen!"
+
+Very softly, very sweetly there fell upon the night air the single
+stroke of a temple bell.
+
+Once it fell, and twice, and yet again.  And as it stopped the night
+was filled with the dull faint throbbing of many drums.
+
+Calling! calling! calling!
+
+
+Hidden in the shadows close to the reed blind, Madhu Krishnaghar
+watched the girl with intent half-shut eyes as, outlined against the
+dim light from the dressing-room, she twisted the heavy plaits of hair
+about her head, pinning them with the diamond hilted dagger; then
+stripping her flimsy garment from her, lifted the sheet from the bed,
+and twisted it deftly about her waist; watched her as she mechanically
+took a white _sari_ embroidered in silver from the ayah, and without
+hesitation folded it in true native fashion about her body and small
+head.
+
+The light of his religion flared into a flame of love and passion
+almost uncontrolled when Leonie, lifting the chick, stood by his side
+in the full light of the moon, with a smile of welcome on her lips, and
+the light of unholy knowledge in her eyes.
+
+Quite close to him she stood with one hand upon his arm, as he hung
+garlands of scented flowers about her neck, and then with a little
+beckoning gesture was gone; and the ayah crouching on the floor, beat
+her withered breast with her withered hand, a world of doubt in her
+monkey eyes.
+
+Like two white moths they flitted through the gloom and the hanging
+ropes of the banyan trees, down the narrow native path, and on through
+strangely empty streets and deserted bazaar to the Praying Ghats.
+
+The air beat about them with the incessant throbbing of many drums,
+calling to prayer--calling to sacrifice.
+
+Calling! calling! calling!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+  "Let us pass our lives at Benares, living by the banks
+  of the divine river, clad only in a single garment, and
+  with our hands uplifted over our heads."--_The Vairagya Sataka_.
+
+
+The Praying Ghats or Steps lay desolate in the light of the full moon.
+
+Hundreds of small lights twinkled and flickered before the countless
+temples; hundreds of fading flower garlands, hung about the temple
+doors or festooned about the gods--some of which are quite
+indescribable--perfumed the night air; and to the right and to the left
+the smouldering bodies on the Burning Ghats cast a crimson glow on the
+slow, silvery waters of India's most holy river.
+
+Of worshippers there was not one.
+
+Of the countless priests who crowd the steps at dawn there was but one.
+
+The mad priest.
+
+Naked save for a loin cloth, he stood as he always stands from dawn to
+dawn with feet wide apart and hands upraised to the heavens, outlined
+against some one of the Rajah's palaces which crown the top and stretch
+the length of the terraces like a mighty rampart between the holiness
+of the place, and the fret and traffic of the outer world.
+
+The holy man's arms, his legs, his emaciated body are covered with a
+fine ash powder, his long hair is matted with cinders and cow-dung, his
+mad eyes stare across the river into the infinite, at that which _we_
+cannot see, as he stands shouting unintelligible, maybe mad words,
+maybe not, to the glory of his goddess, Kali the Terrible.
+
+Was he born mad? no one knows!  What does he eat or drink?  A handful
+of rice, a sip of water from his glittering bronze vessel!  When does
+he sleep?  No one can tell you.
+
+Who knows! who cares!
+
+He is a holy man! the mad priest of the Holy City!
+
+He alone had taken no heed of the incessant resistless throbbing of the
+drums behind him in the city; neither did he take notice of the two
+white figures as they ran lightly, swiftly, hand-in-hand down the
+sunken, crooked, granite steps to a place between the praying rafts at
+the water's edge.
+
+For a moment Leonie hesitated with the water lapping her feet on the
+third step, then she turned her head slowly, and looked straight into
+the man's eyes which had been fixed intently on the nape of her neck.
+
+She gave a little sigh, drew out the dagger and let fall the plaited
+glory of her hair, and lifting the garlands from about her neck threw
+them out on to the waters; then with a native woman's movement pulled
+the _sari_ backwards from her head, and unwound it from her shoulders
+which gleamed like ivory in the moonlight.  Slowly, but without
+hesitation, even as the man dropped his shawl and long white garment
+upon the waters, she untwined the _sari_ from about her body, dropped
+it across a _suttee_ stone, and the dagger upon the step behind, and
+stood swaying gently with naught but the sheeting about her waist and
+limbs.
+
+The man, naked save for a loin cloth, stood like some splendid bronze
+statue two steps lower; straight as a pine was Madhu, the descendant of
+princes, with a width of shoulder most unusual in the native of India,
+and which served to emphasise the slimness of the waist.  Muscle
+rippled under the bronze skin of back, and chest, and limbs; and
+between the breasts gleamed the painted symbol of his religion, just as
+it shone between the brows.
+
+The lean face with its hawk nose, and curved mouth set close in a
+straight line, had the look of an eagle as he stood gazing up at the
+girl with burning eyes, in which fanaticism, heightened by the lapping
+movement of the holy water about his knees, warred with an overwhelming
+passion roused by the slenderness of the white girl's waist, the
+virginity of her beautiful breast, and the satin whiteness of her skin.
+
+And she placed her hand in his and followed him submissively down the
+steps.
+
+The waters bathed her ankles, her knees, her waist, as she made a cup
+of her two hands and drank of the holy water; the jackals yelled from
+the far shore, and the unseemly body of a dead youth floated past face
+downwards a few yards away.
+
+For some long minutes she stood with her face uplifted, then dipping
+her hands again into the water raised them and poured it upon her head
+until she glittered as though beset with diamonds.  Strange little
+movements she made to right and left with both hands, circles she drew
+on the face of the waters, and the man within an inch of her beautiful
+body stood with arms folded hiding his hard clenched hands.
+
+Raising both arms straight above her head she called aloud in answer to
+the spirit which moved her:
+
+"Flowing on, devoted to it," she cried in the soft words of India's
+holy writ, "by day and by night flowing on; I, of desirable activity,
+call upon the heavenly waters!"
+
+From the temple above the mad priest took up her words as he scourged
+himself in the ecstasy of his worship, and shouted:
+
+"Kali!  Kali!  Kali!"
+
+Which eerie solitary cry brought the pigeons out of their nests in
+thousands, to wheel and whirl madly in their fright before resettling
+in the facade of the palaces, of the niches and nooks of the temples,
+and the slender minarets of the Mosque of Aurangzeb.
+
+Bending backwards Leonie laughed up at the priest above, whose body was
+running blood, then descending the last three steps worn by the feet of
+thousands of pilgrims, and tilted by time and the resistless waters,
+flung out her arms and sank beneath the surface while the great plaits
+of hair floated towards the man and crept about his waist like loving,
+living arms.
+
+Three times she sank, and three times she rose, singing gently to
+herself, while great tremors shook the man from his turbaned head to
+his slender feet.
+
+Love or religion?  Who knows!
+
+Are they divided by much more than the breadth of a hair?
+
+Leonie turned and walked up the steps, the wet heavy sheeting hobbling
+her about the knees and ankles, clinging to her as the skin to the
+peach, her dripping hair making little pools of holy water upon the
+holy steps; until, standing upon the one where lay the little crumpled
+heap of her silken _sari_, she unplaited it and shook it out in the
+night breeze.
+
+She picked up the _sari_ and the dagger, and ran a finger along the
+razor edge, looking sideways at the man who moved not an inch when she
+drove the point of the blade beneath the skin above his heart until the
+blood ran; neither did she move when he dipped his finger in his own
+blood and marked her between the brows with the sign of Kali.
+
+The mad priest, frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting temple
+roof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecent
+noise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body to
+pieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; and
+Leonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white _sari_ picked
+out in silver against her breast, held out her hand, and with the
+sweetest, maddest laugh in all the world sped like a deer up the great
+nights of steps.
+
+And at the top when the man, moving swift and as surefooted as a buck,
+closed in upon her, her heavy drapery folded itself soddenly about her
+ankles so that when she essayed to save herself she twisted round and
+fell backwards.
+
+Her mouth quivered in a smile, and her eyes, like stars, flashed back
+into the flaming ones so near her own as the man, lost to all but his
+consuming love for the girl, bent above her, and with slender hands
+crushed her back against the edge of the steps until the skin of her
+shoulders was torn and bruised.
+
+"As the creeper!" he said, whispering the words of the Vega hymn with
+his eyes staring straight into her eyes.  "As the creeper has
+completely embraced the tree so do thou embrace me, that thou mayest be
+one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+He smiled softly as she half raised her arms and whispered to her, the
+words sounding like a summer breeze blowing upon the hill-top.
+
+"As the eagle, flying forth, beats down his wings upon the earth, so do
+I beat down thy mind, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
+mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+And his delicate finger-tips pressed about her temples as he whispered
+to her.
+
+"As the sun goeth at one about the heaven--and--earth here, _so do I go
+about thy mind_, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be
+one not going away from me!"
+
+Slowly he bent still closer, and gently put one hand upon the gracious
+curve of her slender throat; and Leonie, wanton, seductive, bewitched
+Leonie smiled as she too whispered in the tongue of India's holy writ.
+
+"Let yon man love me; being dear to me let him love me; ye gods send
+forth love, let yon man burn for me.
+
+"That yon man may love me, not I him at any time, ye gods send forth
+love, let yon man burn for me!"
+
+The silence which followed was pierced by the call of the holy conch
+shell, so low, so sweet, to prayer, to sacrifice.
+
+Those who have not heard that call can never understand, those who have
+heard will forgive this feeble description of the intoxicating,
+soul-shattering, maddening sound.
+
+Soft and sweet it will steal insidiously into your ear, your brain, and
+the whirlpool of your senses until you stand rooted in ecstasy in a
+flooded field of sweet desire.  Rising swiftly and shrilly it will tear
+like racing waters at the ramparts we and our forefathers, have
+assiduously and mistakenly built around our inner selves; built until
+you and I and our neighbour have been metamorphosed through the ages
+from that mighty thing which went forth and took exactly what it
+wanted, to the almost shapeless slug form which, in the peace times of
+the present enervated century, contentedly eats lettuce in the damp
+seclusion of an overturned flowerpot.
+
+Yes! that call will pull those ramparts to pieces about your feet; and
+at the last indescribable, insistent scream of triumph which sears your
+brain and soul, it would be wise to be on the look out, and to keep a
+strong hand upon the vows you may have vowed, and upon those of the
+commandments you may not already have broken; because at that strange
+seductive sound the solid chunks of love, honour, chastity and right
+thinking; everything, in fact, that is in any way decent and above
+board is likely to break into a thousand infinitesimal, unconsidered
+atoms, and be blown broadcast by the wind of indiscretion.
+
+Leonie lay still, unconscious of the sound and the subtle change
+creeping over the man who bent down to her, and who, high caste,
+over-educated, overstrung, aflame with love and afire with the
+sensuality of his religion, slowly tightened his hand upon the gracious
+curves of the slender throat.
+
+Years ago Kali, his dire deity, had been outraged by denial in her
+desire for sacrifice, and since then, in her wrath, the black goddess
+had scourged the land with plague, pestilence, famine, and earthquake.
+
+Truly sacrifice of goats and buffaloes had been made until the altars
+and the courts of her temples ran blood; offerings had been made to her
+priests of grain and jewels, yet had she continued to whip the land
+until thousands died of hunger and disease.
+
+Why should not his hand bring the long-desired and long-sought peace to
+his well-loved land, and what more fitting place and time for sacrifice
+than the steps of the Holy River, under the light of the full moon
+which is Kali's lamp?
+
+Ah! and why should he not have his earthly reward in love, one short,
+full hour of the delight he had denied himself, and then, even upon the
+_suttee_ stone, that little memorial of the burning alive of the young
+widow upon the funeral pyre of the beloved husband, drive the diamond
+hilted dagger through the soft breast in worship of his god, and
+through his own heart that he might follow his beloved quickly as she
+passed to Paradise.
+
+Yes! sacrifice of the woman he loved that his god might be twice
+pleased.
+
+He was crazed with the delirium of his religion, mad with the call of
+the senses lashed to frenzy by the restraint which had been unnaturally
+forced upon him throughout his life; his eyes had the look of the eyes
+of those gods who spy down upon you from the shadowy corners of India's
+temples, and his nostrils dilated as he touched the dagger in her hand.
+
+Only for a moment!  For even as he touched it the single beat of a drum
+fell heavily upon the air, causing him to sit back on his heels with a
+smile upon the full curved lips, and a light of sudden understanding in
+his eyes.
+
+There was more toward than a mere sacrifice!
+
+The Holy City was, and had been for days, in a positive ferment of
+religious excitement; the bazaars were thronged with pilgrims who, by
+boat and train and on foot, had hurried to the city of a thousand
+temples.
+
+Something unusual was in the air although no one could clearly explain
+what it was; something was to happen although no one could name the
+hour or the day!
+
+Rice, and flowers, and jewels cemented with blood had been thrust into
+and pressed down until they completely filled the great crack which had
+suddenly appeared before the altar of the oldest and most venerated
+image of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction, in the Holy City; and the
+foreigner had been warned not to place his profane foot within the
+precincts of the city upon this night of the full moon.
+
+The native laughed as he sprang to his feet, standing bare and
+exceeding beautiful beside the indescribable graven images; and he
+laughed as he searched in the folds of his turban, and having found the
+pellets bent down and pressed them between Leonie's teeth, then jerked
+her to her feet, steadying her with his eyes.
+
+He flung her back against the kiosk wall, and encircling her with his
+arms drove them fiercely down and against her as he met his splendid
+teeth in the whiteness of her shoulder--in love; and taking her hand
+sped with her to the inner places of the city, shouting as he ran in
+the frenzy of his religion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+  "Neither let her take thee with her eyelids."--_The Bible_.
+  "And making a tinkling with their feet."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+The bazaars were moving in one solid mass in the direction of, but not
+to, the Cow Temple.
+
+For hours the endless streams had moved inch by inch through the narrow
+streets lined with shops and gaily painted houses, towards the heart of
+India's Holy City.
+
+Young women and old, young men and old, children, fakirs and holy men
+pressed patiently forward, impelled and called by some mystic summons
+they could not explain.
+
+There was no pushing nor striving, neither was there laughter nor any
+kind of merry-making, although a flower garland hung around every neck,
+although the multi-coloured raiment was of the best and cleanest and
+brightest, and the different marks of the different religious sects
+shone as though fresh painted between the eyes and upon the face and
+body.
+
+The holy cows walked slowly with the people, hung with garlands and
+painted on the face and sides; holding up the traffic as, unafraid,
+they snuffled their velvety muzzles in the unguarded baskets of grain,
+and pushed their way unconcernedly and by holy right across the human
+stream into the Cow Temple as they passed the ever-open door.
+
+There was certainly no pushing nor striving to get one before the
+other, but underneath the calm pulsated a certain restrained
+excitement, to be read in the light of the thousands of eyes, and the
+extraordinary spasmodic, almost uncontrolled, movements of the delicate
+dusky hands.
+
+Mothers would suddenly jerk their children up into their arms and press
+their little faces against one of the thousands of tiny shrines, where
+the gods sit all day and all night behind the bars through which are
+thrust offerings of flowers, of food, of jewels.
+
+Men would suddenly strip themselves of all except the loin-cloth and,
+casting their clothing at the feet of some holy man, proceed calmly
+upon their way.  One out of a number of beautiful, fragile girls, with
+cast-down painted eyes and half-veiled face, for no apparent reason
+would sidle up against some man; rest for one moment against him, and
+continue with him upon the road, his arm about her, crushing her body
+to his; and the drums throbbed, and the horns screamed in and around
+the temple of their goddess.
+
+Yet one did strive, and, heedless of rebuke, did push her way
+ruthlessly through the throngs, slipping on the greasy pavement covered
+with refuse and cow-dung; sliding, ducking, squirming her way in and
+out, breathless and dishevelled, with a simple brown _sari_ slipping
+from about her sleek head and pock-marked face.
+
+Her monkey eyes flashed this way and that in search of something or
+someone she could not find; her withered hands beat her withered
+breast; the sweat streamed down her face until at last the crowd gave
+way, and looking upon her as one mentally afflicted, helped her
+stumbling passage up to and through the temple gateway.
+
+Priests stood at the entrance to the outer court of the temple.  They
+did not stand there, as do the ushers in the West, in order to keep the
+riff-raff, those humble, poverty-stricken children of God, from
+occupying the plush-covered seats in His House; but knowing the
+intimate connection between religion and the senses, and the limited
+space of the court of sacrifice and the temple itself, they stood there
+in order to keep a finger upon the pulse of that mass of humanity's
+passions.
+
+The full moon flung her silver on to the stained worn flags of the
+roofless court; hundreds, thousands even of tiny wicks in tiny
+earthenware saucers flickered in the niches and on the outer edge of
+the walls; hundreds of torches flung a smoky veil around the restless
+figures passing in and out of the narrow entrance, and over dark heaps
+which lay at the foot of the walls and in the corners.
+
+Black heaps which, lay upon dark carpets, heaps big and small which
+seemed to move, around which hung an overpowering, sickening stench of
+blood.
+
+Heaps revealed when touched by the fluttering drapery of some
+worshipper to be the decapitated bodies of goats and bullocks lying in
+their blood, and from which would rise the millions of ever-moving
+flies which had given them a semblance of life in the torch-light.
+
+Millions of flies, bloated offences, which settle for a second heavily
+on your face or arm and fly slowly back to their feasting.
+
+It had been a day of stupendous sacrifice, and the place ran blood.
+
+From the inner temple came the sweet never-stopping clang of a silver
+bell, as in one continuous stream the worshippers climbed slowly up the
+flight of steps, passed in, struck one note by swinging the tongue of
+the bell to announce their arrival to their goddess, and passed out;
+while babies of both sexes, naked save for a silver bead upon their
+rotund little bellies in the male, or a profusion of tiny bracelets and
+a nose-ring in the female, heaped the flower offerings in masses at
+Kali's feet.
+
+Kali!  Ah! formidable, terrible image graven in stone!
+
+Pictures, highly coloured and blatant reproductions which will shock
+your artistic sense, can be bought for a few annas at the native shops
+which swarm outside the temple walls; but it is probable, nay, it is
+certain that not a single one of the Europeans who may read this book
+will ever see the original goddess in all her terror, and all that
+inexplicable power with which she holds the Hindu multitudes in the
+palms of her black hands.
+
+Black, and crowned and heaped with jewels, she looks down at, or
+through, or over you with her slanting fish-shaped eyes.  Her small
+ears, her flat nose, her arms, her pendant breasts are smothered in
+priceless gems; a huge red tongue protruding through the stretched
+mouth hangs far down upon the chest, ready to lick up the flames of
+sacrificial fires; a magnificent tiara binds the black hair which
+streams in masses behind her small distorted body; rows of pearls,
+flower garlands, and a string of skulls hang about her short neck; one
+hand holds a knife, the other a bleeding head, two are raised in
+blessing, while behind her shines a sun of flaming tongues of fire, and
+over all is spread an umbrella.
+
+Yet it is not the horror of the repulsive physique hewn in stone which
+holds you breathless before her; you know it is stone you are looking
+at, just as you know that the Sphinx is stone; but as with the Sphinx
+you feel the life of centuries throbbing through the carved monster;
+you feel that its breath, which is about you, is the wind which has
+swept across the desert places and teeming cities of the East; you feel
+that the eyes which are upon you have seen all things; in fact you are
+almost mesmerised by the force of ages into falling upon your knees in
+worship, before you suddenly wrench yourself violently round to face
+the sun outside the open door; and even as you do it involuntarily put
+your hands to your neck, upon the nape of which, by the suggestion of
+unconfessed fear, you have felt the stealthy, longing, jewelled fingers.
+
+On this night the slanting fish eyes of the goddess seemed to look
+through the doorway, and to linger upon the exquisite figure of a child
+dancing upon the extreme edge of the terrace between the two flights of
+steps.
+
+Dancing!--hardly that, as she stood, her body swaying slightly in the
+whirl of her mixed emotions, and totally unconscious of four young men
+who, arms entwined, stood below, watching the beauty of her body and
+her movements with half-shut eyes.
+
+Her ankle-length, full muslin skirt swung this way and that, as she
+moved slightly from her bare, over-slender waist, which accentuated the
+wonder of the young bosom out of all proportion in any but an eastern
+maid of ten years.
+
+Jewels flashed in her delicate nose and ears, and on her slender
+fingers and parted toes, for was she not on the eve of her marriage,
+this little maid?  Who, finding herself upon this unwonted night, alone
+for the first time in her life, had broken purdah, with her senses
+strung by days and nights of never-ceasing preparation for her
+marriage; during which she had been massaged by skilful, cunning hands;
+bathed and perfumed, forced to dance, forced to over-feed; until roused
+to a pitch of terrible excitement by drugs and curiosity, and the
+religious ecstasy of all around her, she had crept out alone, and into
+the temple with the teeming multitude to dance for the glory of her
+goddess.
+
+Her little feet made patterns in the dust as she turned slightly, this
+child of ten, until her snake-like arms seemed stretched in invitation
+to the four pairs of burning eyes fixed upon the virgin beauty of the
+little body.
+
+Who noticed in all that crowd when four pairs of hands shot up and
+seized her about the knees, lifting her gently down, or who, in the
+tumult, heard the cry smothered in the muffling cloth of a white coat
+in a distant shadowed corner.
+
+And one dead body more or less in the morning, what does it signify or
+matter in a place which reeks of blood?
+
+And just as this happened, and just as a dishevelled pock-marked woman
+stole swiftly up the temple steps, every face turned in one direction,
+and wave after wave of indescribable excitement swept the multitude.
+
+And yet there was nothing, no sound, no sight to account for it; only
+the high priest, tall and terrible, with the face of a Roman emperor or
+a Jesuit, came from behind the altar and stood at the open door,
+looking first at the throngs and then at a mass of black cloud which,
+as is sometimes the way in India, had suddenly spread itself towards
+the east, and was slowly climbing the heavens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+  "The gods approve
+  The depth, and not the tumult of the soul."--_Wordsworth_.
+
+
+"What a frightful row the natives are making in the city," was the
+fractious comment of one heat-distracted tourist to another through the
+mosquito netting which divided the two beds.
+
+"Disgraceful!" peevishly assented the other as she turned restlessly
+upon the thin, hot mattress, and heaved the one thin sheet to the foot
+of the hot bed.
+
+A sharper note had topped the heavy murmur which, like the rumble of a
+distant sea, had beaten the air without ceasing throughout the night.
+
+A film operator would have said that a crowd had woken up; a London
+policeman, that a crowd was turning nasty, as the sharp note went
+crescendo right along, until it took the definite tone of thousands of
+human voices upraised in unrest of some kind.
+
+This way and that surged the multitude, bowing unconsciously before the
+gusts of passion which swept from every quarter.
+
+The fret of the thousands of feet upon the paving sounded a silky
+accompaniment to the strange throaty murmur of fast rising religious
+hysteria; sharp, uncontrollable cries stood out like steel pencilling
+against the velvet monotony of the throbbing drums; the never ceasing
+tinkle of rings, and clanking of bracelets and holy chains against the
+blare of the horns sounded as out of place as a child singing in a
+thunder storm.
+
+The high priest, with the face of Rome, with a beckoning gesture, drew
+towards him other priests.  Some also with the face of Rome, and some
+with the face of the field labourer; some, gaunt and stern; some, jolly
+and rotund; well, just like any gathering of clergy, of any creed, you
+can see any day, in any country of Europe.
+
+The chiming of the silver bell had stopped when the worshippers, upon
+the peremptory command of the priests, fled pell-mell out of the temple
+and down the steps to join the frenzied crowd; while from the direction
+of the Praying Ghats there arose a roar of voices as two slim figures
+sped swiftly up the narrow lane, which seemed to open of its own accord
+before them.
+
+The woman, clad from the waist downwards in one linen piece, came
+running swiftly, lightly, undisturbed, almost hidden in the masses of
+her hair blown before her by the rising wind.
+
+Her naked body gleamed in the mixed lights; one hand, thrust out
+through the hair, held a dagger with diamond hilt; the other was
+clasped in the hand of the man who ran evenly and steadily beside her.
+
+There was not apparently an inch of space to spare in all those narrow
+streets; but by the madness of religion which drove the packed humanity
+back against the walls, a way was made for her who appeared to the
+multitude as the long-promised earthly incarnation of the Goddess of
+Death.
+
+When she had passed, those who were against the wall remained there,
+standing crushed to death, supported by the indifferent neighbours who
+had helped to drive in their ribs; and those who had slipped to their
+knees in religious fervour, or by reason of the state of the street,
+also remained prone upon the ground, the mass of people treading
+indifferently upon their broken backs and necks, while the threatening
+heavens were rent with screams of physical agony and cries of sensuous
+delight.
+
+Straight up the steps ran Leonie, and into the interior of the temple,
+just as a priest, a lad, with his face twitching spasmodically, and
+calling upon his god, fell dead at her feet, smitten by the force of
+his religion.
+
+Leonie, throwing up her arms, laughed as she put her cut and bleeding
+foot upon the boy's neck--laughed until the place pealed and echoed
+with the unseemly clamour, causing the crowds outside, held only in
+check by the mental force of the handful of priests, to strain against
+the invisible hypnotic barrier, and cry to high heaven for a sacrifice.
+
+Then Leonie turned about and ran out on to the terrace, standing a
+ghastly, beautiful figure before the multitude; and only a pair of
+monkey eyes, in a pock-marked face, hidden by the deep shadows of a
+corner inside the temple, saw the high priest with _roomal_ in hand,
+creep stealthily up behind the girl.
+
+No one in the tumult heard the growling of the elements; no one noticed
+the clouds bent on enveloping the moon; no one but the pock-marked
+woman understood what was towards for the appeasing of the outraged god.
+
+"Blood!" screamed the tight packed ranks; "a sacrifice of blood!  Kali
+is hungry!  Kali is thirsty!  Give unto the Black Mother that which she
+demands!"
+
+Leonie flung up both arms and laughed, even as the high priest drew
+back one step, scowling at the averted sacrifice.
+
+"A sacrifice!" went up the cry from thousands of throats; "a sacrifice!
+a sacrifice!"
+
+Again Leonie flung out both arms, and, just as the _roomal_ was
+slipping over the small head, with the scream of a tigress whose cub is
+in danger, the ayah leapt straight at her beloved child, wrenching the
+knotted handkerchief from the priest's hand.
+
+A horrible cry of disappointed blood lust shook the very earth; drums
+beat, horns screamed, daggers flashed in the dense mass, and fingers
+met round many a throat.
+
+They were mad indeed the people, but none so mad as Leonie as she stood
+with feet apart glaring down at the ayah's sleek head, which she held
+by the hair, in one hand.
+
+So mad was she that the priests drew back as from one divine; all but
+the high-caste youth who stood unnoticed amongst them and who advanced
+one step as Leonie raised her face to the moon.
+
+"She of the full moon," she chanted, "was the first worshipped one with
+depths of days, of nights.  They who, O worshipful one, gratify thee
+with offerings, those well doers are entered into thy firmament!"
+
+To which the waiting multitude thundered a response.
+
+"A sacrifice!  A sacrifice!  A sacrifice!"
+
+Over and over again went up the cry as men and women and children fell
+foaming to the ground, "and conches and kettledrums, tabors and drums,
+and cow-horns blared."
+
+Then came a silence, deep, sinister, and foreboding; only for one
+second before it was broken by a gasp, the catching of the breath in
+ecstasy of thousands of mankind.
+
+And followed screams of pure delight as Leonie flung back her hand, in
+which gleamed the diamond hilted dagger, just as a terrific peal of
+thunder crashed upon the searing flash of lightning, which flamed from
+the dense clouds as they swept over and blotted out the moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+  "Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
+  I'd set my ten commandments in your face!"--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+Leonie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the _gharri_ to
+take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her
+bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the
+manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it
+had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded
+her head and looked at him out of agonised, forgiving eyes.
+
+The hotel _en masse_, at least the feminine portion of it, had had a
+prior interview with the manager which had been _superlatively_
+unpleasant for him.
+
+Coerced by a force which was closely allied to the brute; almost
+shouted down when he essayed to argue in favour of the hounded girl;
+threatened by the immediate transfer of the entire visiting list to the
+books of a rival hotel, he had ultimately owned to defeat; and Leonie
+sat on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly into the denuded
+dressing-room, while the native staff, yea! even unto him who had done
+her no service, buzzed round in the vicinity of her door.
+
+Strange things had happened, things undefined, and therefore not
+capable of bearing the light of honest dissection or discussion.
+
+What _had_ happened during the night of rioting--so-called--in the
+city?  What had been the meaning of those white-robed figures which had
+fluttered near her door?  And oh! why had her faithful ayah been found
+on the edge of the river the morning after, stabbed through the heart?
+
+As if anyone in India with any sense at all _would_ make inquiries
+about the last event.
+
+All that and a lot more! and quite enough to slam the gates of heaven
+or the hotel upon any lovely woman on her own!
+
+Yes! but--did all _that_ really do the actual slamming?
+
+Not a bit of it!
+
+It was the most convenient excuse the womenfolk could find to hang upon
+the peg of jealousy which had been knocked into the wall of feminine
+conceit and bad intent, by the hammer of Leonie's beauty, and
+irritating indifference to both men and women, especially the former.
+
+Let any woman lure to her side some other woman's own particular bit of
+masculine property; poach successfully upon her understocked male
+preserves; and figuratively, maybe verbally, most assuredly positively
+if she live east of Blackfriars, the claws of jealousy will be
+sharpened upon her; _but_--ignore the bit of masculine property, pass
+it by on the other side, consider it as belonging to somebody else,
+leave the preserves severely alone, and vials of execration, anathema,
+and denunciation, which are all synonyms for the same thing, will be
+poured upon her because of her lack of the appreciative faculty.
+
+Fact!
+
+Very few women can see the difference between joyfully hoarding genuine
+antique pewter, and wearing a second-hand négligé.
+
+So Leonie was fleeing home via Calcutta, and she sat without movement,
+hating herself and the world, even the man who, having taken her at her
+word, had left her alone to stumble as best she could along the
+crooked, lonely road which would end, as far as she could see, in a
+padded cell.
+
+"How could you?" she suddenly cried aloud, and the natives made
+surreptitious signs, and withdrew to a certain distance out of respect
+to the disorder of her mind.  "How _could_ you leave me!  Didn't you
+_know_ that it is because I love you so that I would rather _die_ than
+let you share my curse?  But couldn't you have done _something_, tried
+to follow that clue, gone somewhere, oh! done _anything_ just to show
+that----!"
+
+The rumble of wheels cut her agitation short, and drew the native
+element closer to the door, in order that it should be quite near the
+mem-sahib when she appeared--with her purse in her left hand.
+
+And while she sat on her bed, and later on in the train, striving to
+break the mental thongs which bound her to some intangible stake, Jan
+Cuxson was sitting in the secret places of the jungle temple, striving
+to break the bonds of raw hide by which he had found himself fastened
+to a ring in the wall.
+
+As he struggled he speculated savagely upon that insensate sense of
+security, common to most Britishers, which had caused him to try and
+find the Hindu temple under the guidance of an unknown native.
+
+He mentally reviewed his journey from the boat to the temple, fighting
+through the tiger-grass, breaking through the delicate impeding
+branches of the sundri trees, crushing the sundri breathers under his
+heavy boots as he tramped behind the guide, having failed to notice,
+owing to the resemblance that exists between one ordinary native and
+the next, that the guide and coolie of the jungle were not the guide
+and coolie of the paddle boat.
+
+He remembered that once he had stopped dead and laid a detaining hand
+on the guide's shoulder, as through the darkening forest had come a
+cry, eerie as it wailed through the shadows, to be taken up ahead of
+them, and echoed and re-echoed until it became faint in the distance
+and died away altogether.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+The native had not hesitated.
+
+"The cry, O Sahib, Protector of the poor, of the jungle owl as it seeks
+its food!"
+
+Cuxson, unobservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the
+trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any
+member of the owl family to be abroad.
+
+Also, when he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot
+strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect
+something which whizzed through the space where his head had been a
+second before.
+
+It is true he had questioned the guide as to the route they were
+taking, pointing out that it was not the one traversed in the _shikar_.
+
+To which the guide had replied that doubtless the _shikari_ had taken
+the sahibs many miles out of their way to ensure a big toll to the
+sahibs' guns, and those of the mem-sahibs.
+
+Jan Cuxson had accepted every explanation.
+
+Extraordinary is this complacent sense of security of the British male
+when he butts into the paths and customs of countries of which he knows
+literally _nothing_; and he had arrived at the temple all in good time.
+
+Silence, intense and rather overwhelming, had hung about the forbidding
+place which allied to the abomination of desolation had disconcerted
+him, and made him turn to the guide for further reference.
+
+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 dâk
+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 dâk 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 dâk bungalow.
+
+
+For the benefit of those who have not experienced the assorted joys of
+travelling in India, a dâk--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 dâk 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 _bonâ 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.
+
+She stood for a moment laughing silently, looking down upon him, and
+turning, ran swiftly across the flags to the block of fallen stones.
+There she paused and glanced at the white man bound to the wall with
+the light of battle in his eyes, before she disappeared, beckoning to
+the priest who followed as she ran down the passage of the gods, making
+obeisance before them as she passed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+  "The soil out of which such men as he are made
+  is good to be born on, good to live on,
+  good to die for, and to be buried in."--_Lowell_.
+
+
+Leonie lay motionless on the stained stone before the altar; her hair,
+pulled back clear from her neck, swept behind her head like a cascade
+of rust-coloured water to the floor; her hands were clasped between her
+breasts, and her great unfathomable eyes stared up into those of the
+stone woman who looked down at her and seemed to laugh with joy at her
+long coveted prize.
+
+In every corner black shapes danced; advancing, retreating, springing
+towards the roof and vanishing utterly.  The place seemed infested with
+goblins, or devils, things of untold evilness and vice, although, in
+reality, they were but the shadows thrown by the little lights which
+were like tongues licking the lips of darkness in sensuous anticipation
+of the coming feast of blood.
+
+The old priest stood looking up at his god with perplexity in his
+sunken eyes.
+
+Arrayed in snow-white garment, with long hair hanging down, he held the
+knife of sacrifice in one hand, and in the other the sacred _roomal_.
+
+The terrible picture shone softly in the light of the full moon which
+struck straight down upon the altar through a hole in the ruined roof.
+
+"Tell thy servant thy pleasure, O Black One!" prayed the priest,
+swaying slightly to and fro.  "Make him understand it the _roomal_
+shall be knotted about the neck of this white sacrifice, or if the
+knife shall draw a necklace of red about the white neck and upon the
+white breast.  Give me an answer, O Mother, that I may right the wrong
+of many moons ago.  A sign, a sign, O Mother!"
+
+As he spoke; and for no apparent reason, Leonie's hands unclasped, her
+arms opened and fell towards her sides, leaving the beautiful breast
+bare with the jewel in shape and colour of a cat's eye winking craftily
+with the cunning and knowledge of the sins of all ages, just above the
+heart.
+
+The priest shouted in worship, and his words, caught, echoed and
+re-echoed from the dome, drowned the sound of footsteps running at high
+speed across the flower-strewn floor.
+
+Madhu Krishnaghar, naked save for the turban which bound his handsome
+head and the loin cloth which girt the slender middle, sped like the
+wind to the rescue of his beloved.
+
+In the black shades of the jungle, understanding at last that for him
+there could be no life outside the life of the white woman he loved,
+and no happiness outside her happiness, he had raced Time down the
+jungle path, through the outer gates and temple door, pausing not for
+the fraction of a second; realising, as he ran, that upon his speed
+alone depended the life of his beloved.  And even as the priest flung
+back his arm with a scream of ecstasy, the knife was wrenched out of
+his hand from behind.
+
+O Madhu, you splendid heathen, who defied the anger of your strange
+gods for the love in your noble heart.
+
+"Ha!" said the old man as he swung round in fury; then he smiled and
+opened wide his arms.  "Thou!  O my son! _thou_!  Thou wouldst offer
+the great sacrifice thyself to our most gentle mother.  And art thou
+not in the right?  Thine has been the task and the toil, therefore is
+it meet that thou shouldst have the reward."
+
+He laid his hands upon the shoulders of the youth, who straightway
+gripped the veined old wrists and raised the withered arms high up
+above their heads, while their eyes met in a sudden-born, subconscious
+enmity, and the knife lay glittering along the wrinkled brown skin.
+
+Only for an instant, and Madhu let go his hold, and turning, stood
+looking down upon the jewel above the woman's heart.  As he looked, the
+thing, catching the reflections of the lights, shone strangely bright
+upon the snow-white skin, and the lust of blood swept him from head to
+foot.
+
+He longed to drive the dagger through the breast above the shining
+jewel; he craved to see the whiteness of the skin stained with red, to
+throw himself upon the still form and shut the dead mouth with kisses.
+
+He was mad with passion, intoxicated with the heavy perfumed air, drunk
+with the atmosphere of his surroundings, and his slim body shook as he
+ran the needle-point of the dagger into his own breast.
+
+He closed his eyes in the ecstasy of that pain which is twin to the
+ecstasy of desire fulfilled, and in their closing woke suddenly to the
+purity of his strange love.  He turned with a snarl and hit up the old
+man's hand as it almost touched the nape of his neck, and stretching
+wide his arms made a shield of his body between Leonie and the intent
+he read in the priest's eyes, just as a brick fell and split to pieces
+at their feet.
+
+"Linger not, my son," said the old priest fiercely.  "Behold! the rites
+have been performed, the chants sung, and the offerings made.  Drive
+the knife home, and give drink to thy mother of that which she loves.
+Hasten! for she is angry at thy slowness, and the very earth trembles
+at her wrath."
+
+But Madhu Krishnaghar looked straight back into the fierce, suspicious
+old eyes, and moved quickly towards the priest who, taken by surprise,
+retreated hurriedly.
+
+"Father!" came the words in the musical, steady voice.  "O servant of
+the Black One, I cannot, nay, I will not, for I love yon white woman
+with a love passing all understanding.  Nay, hearken!  A sacrifice
+there must be this night, and there shall be one.  Even me, O my
+Father.  Let it suffice, for behold is my love so great, that she, the
+slender white flower, seems but one with me.  Let her go, let her go,
+and lay me on the stone, warm with the life of her dear body, and drive
+the knife through my heart, that through my love peace may be made with
+thy god and my god!"
+
+The whole world seemed bound in a great terrible silence as the two men
+stood staring at each other in the soft silver light of the moon; then
+the old man smiled gently, with the cunning of all time in his eyes,
+and creeping close to his pupil spoke in the merest whisper; tempting,
+as have always tempted, those who desire to gain their own ends, and
+who justify all means as long as that end is gained.
+
+"Thou lovest her, my son.  The infidel white woman, the sacrifice long
+dedicated to thy god.  And why not, for thou are marked even with the
+mark which shows between the breasts like lotus buds.  But thinkest
+thou, O son of princes, O descendant of the great, that thou art fit to
+mate with her.  She is white, a daughter of the all-conquering race;
+thou--thou art black--a pariah--a dog--thou wouldst be whipped from her
+presence, thou high-born son of India."
+
+The old man never moved his eyes from the young face, and neither the
+one nor the other saw the great striped terrified beast which slunk
+past them and disappeared into the shadows, seeking protection in its
+terror.
+
+"But why shouldst thou let this woman, whom thou lovest, go?  Why not
+make sacrifice of love as well as life to the great one?  Behold is she
+soft and white and all-pleasing!  Why, therefore, should she not come
+unto thy intent neath the eyes of the Sweet One, while I make offerings
+in the shadows towards thy well doing; so that the Black One will be
+twice pleased."
+
+Of all the horrible temptations in that place of horror!  And where in
+the name of all the gods did the native, unshackled by convention or
+code, find the strength to resist?
+
+For while the priest whispered the young face was swept by a flood of
+conflicting emotions--which passed--leaving it as pure, as
+soul-stirring as the Taj Mahal at dawn.
+
+"No!  O Holy One!  I will not--I love her--I love her--I will not!"
+
+The words were firm and the young mouth like steel, and the eyes looked
+steadily back into those of the priest as the latter rushed upon him in
+mighty, inhuman wrath.
+
+"And I say that thou shalt, thou begotten son of evil.  I say that thou
+shalt encompass this woman with thy might, and then offer her in
+sacrifice to Kali, the Goddess of Death.  I say that thou _shalt_."
+
+It was a case of will pitted against will, for the old man knew that
+the younger would not dare raise hand against him for fear of
+everlasting damnation.
+
+And Madhu Krishnaghar girded himself for the battle by putting his love
+for the white woman in the forefront of his mind.
+
+And as they fought, desperately, with one last terrific pull which
+caused the hide to cut down to the wrist bone, Jan Cuxson wrenched the
+ring he had loosened from the wall, and stood swaying, sick with pain.
+Sweat poured down his face and bare chest, and blood flowed from his
+wrists while his burst finger-tips fumbled clumsily with the deep
+embedded thongs.
+
+"I did it--I did it," he kept on repeating savagely, as his knees
+trembled and his body turned cold in agony.  "I did it--I did it--God
+grant I am in time--in time."
+
+Free at last, smothered in blood, dragging his heavily booted feet with
+difficulty, he sought and found the broken blade, staggered across the
+floor, stooped, and entered the passage of the gods where the imprint
+of his beloved's bare feet marked the dust of ages.
+
+And Leonie lay quite still; to all appearance dead, with her open eyes
+turned back beneath the lids and her mouth half open showing her even
+teeth.
+
+Not a word passed between the two men as they fought for her, one for
+her life, the other for her death.  This way and that they moved; the
+one trying to escape from the direct range of the relentless
+will-power, and yet keep himself between the girl and the religious
+fanatic; the other striving to press his opponent back even to the
+altar stone.
+
+Like iron to a magnet Madhu's hand was closed about the dagger hilt,
+and try as he would he could not relax the grasp nor fling the knife
+far back into the shadows; neither could he keep his footing, for
+strive as he would the priest's magnetic power, developed and trained
+through years and years of study and practice, drove him back inch by
+inch towards the god who looked down upon them with her fish-shaped
+eyes.
+
+A glint of triumph shone in the eyes of the priest, and twisted the
+corner of his mouth as the heel of his enemy thudded against the stone
+upon which lay the white girl; and he concentrated every ounce of his
+strength for the last moment when, by sheer force of his will, the
+knife should be lifted and driven down, deep, even to the hilt.  And
+the white man hastened as best he could, reeling at every step, with
+blood streaming from his wrists and spattering upon the stones beneath
+the leering eyes of the gods.  Not one of the three heeded the low
+moaning of the wind as it swept past the temple and through the trees,
+to die away into a great, uncanny, unnatural silence, unbroken by sound
+of beast or bird.
+
+Fate feeling for her shears, and peevish through want of sleep maybe,
+or mayhap irritated by their obstreperous behaviour, jerked the strings
+which bound those marionettes called humans to her palsied old fingers.
+
+The old priest, misjudging the pull given to his string, in what he
+mistook to be his triumph, _laughed_.
+
+It is better to laugh last indeed, but oft-times it is best not to
+laugh at all, for who can foresee the particle of dust which may enter
+your indecently and injudiciously wide open mouth to choke you in your
+ill-timed mirth.
+
+Only for an instant did he triumph above his enemy, but for just that
+instant he loosened his will power; and Madhu Krishnaghar, sensing the
+relief, and whipped by the laugh to one final desperate effort of his
+failing powers, raised his hand and flung the knife far back to fall
+with a clatter in some distant corner.
+
+It was done.
+
+Youth had mocked at experience, life at death, love at opposition, as
+it has done since the beginning of time, and will do, let us hope,
+until the end.
+
+For as the knife hurtled into the shadows, Madhu bent swiftly and
+lifted Leonie into his arms, holding her in this his last moment of
+heaven upon earth, tenderly and firmly, as he glared defiance over her
+head at the priest.
+
+And he, understanding at last that he had failed, cast himself at the
+feet of his god who, in her fury, stamped with both her blood-stained
+feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+  "Greater love hath no man."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+There was a shout from the doorway leading to the secret places of the
+temple as Cuxson, covered with blood and dust, half-crazed with horror,
+paused for a moment as he took in the awful picture before him.
+
+Leonie, with her hair almost sweeping the ground, lay half clothed and
+seemingly dead in the arms of a native, whose face was a picture of
+triumphant love for all to see; and a wild-eyed priest beat his breast
+before the horrible image of the terrible, all powerful Goddess of
+Destruction.
+
+He sprang forward with another shout, which was lost in the shriek and
+crash of the raging elements.
+
+For even as he moved there was a terrific roar as of tons of exploding
+dynamite, and a shriek of wind as it tore through the building, blowing
+out the little flickering lights, leaving the place pitch black save
+for the steady light of the full moon.
+
+Then he swayed like a drunken man as the floor rose in a great wave and
+yet another, heaving the flags this way and that, cracking and
+splitting in every direction as it subsided.
+
+"Leonie!" he shouted, though no sound could be heard above the
+appalling din.  "Leonie!  Leonie!"
+
+He saw her lying in a pool of moonlight as though asleep, and near her
+knelt the native, with arms outstretched above her, sheltering her.
+
+There was a moment of complete dead silence, and then with a tearing,
+rending sound the dome and the temple walls split from top to base; and
+with a thundering crash the great block of stone upon which was carved
+the image of Kali the Terrible split in two, toppled over and fell upon
+the kneeling priest.
+
+Herds of screaming beasts hurled themselves through the riven walls and
+fled across the temple floor, fighting blindly to escape.  Monkeys in
+hundreds scrambled over the mounds of fallen bricks, chattering and
+calling like lost, frightened children; a tiger with one bound landed
+noiselessly a few feet from those two in the moonlight, half reared
+with a short coughing roar and bounded as noiselessly away.  And God
+alone knows what saved the three from instant death among the tottering
+ruins.
+
+The power of Love perchance.
+
+The son of princes sheltering the girl slowly, oh! slowly straightened
+himself, when a prolonged silence seemed to indicate the end of the
+greatest earthquake that ever swept the Sunderbunds Jungle.
+
+Blood streamed from the side of his head, battered in by a broken
+fragment of the high altar that had been hurled through the air; his
+left shoulder was in splinters, crushed by the collapse of the roof
+which must have killed Leonie if he had not covered her with his body;
+blood spouted from some great severed artery in the arm which seemed to
+hang by a thread from the splintered shoulder; yet was his face aglow
+with light and love, and his eyes afire with happiness as he raised a
+tawny tress of hair and pressed it to his lips.
+
+He was dying, quickly, yet he turned his head and smiled at the sound
+of Jan Cuxson's boots scrambling over the impeding heaps of stone.  For
+one second only the torture of the sacrifice required of him flared in
+the soft brown eyes; and then in the pride of his great race, and with
+an effort of will beyond all telling, he put his unbroken arm round the
+woman he loved so well, lifted her, got somehow to his feet, and
+walked, aye! walked steadily across the few yards which separated him
+from the white man.
+
+Cuxson, not realising his terrible plight, with eyes only for the woman
+_he_ loved, wrenched Leonie from his hold and swept her from head to
+foot with frantic eyes.
+
+"What have you done to her?" he demanded fiercely.  "Before the
+earthquake what did you do to her?  Tell me--or by God I'll----"
+
+He stopped the bitter words in time to save himself from everlasting
+remorse.
+
+For Madhu Krishnaghar suddenly straightened his battered body, and
+looked the white man in the eyes.
+
+"She is safe, O white man, safe and unharmed.  Take her, keep
+her--carry her by the--the short road without the--the temple
+gates--to--happiness, _I_ give _her_--to--you--because _I_--I
+love--her--for ever!"
+
+There was a moment's terrible silence in which the two men stood
+divided, yet united, in their great love for the one woman.
+
+The native of India put his hand to his forehead and salaamed before
+the woman for whom he had sacrificed all, then turned slowly around
+towards the place where the image of his god had so lately stood.
+
+"Kali!" he called, and his young voice was as the clashing of golden
+bells at sunset.  "Kali!  Mother of all--I come!"
+
+And unwitting of the great reward awaiting those who attain everlasting
+peace through the victory of the greater love, he crashed face
+downwards, dead, upon the flower-strewn floor, and passed for ever into
+the safe keeping of the one and only God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+  "When the day breaks and the shadows flee away!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Jan Cuxson lifted Leonie's face to the light of the moon, and caught
+his breath at the sight of the turned back eyes and drooping mouth.
+
+This was the outcome of it all!  _This_ was how she was left to him;
+saved from physical hurt but with her mind for ever bound by the will
+of yon dead priest.  Hypnotised, mesmerised, to be under the influence
+of the Goddess of Destruction until her death; maybe to pass her life
+in the security of a padded cell; she, his Leonie, his love, his
+wife-to-be.
+
+He crushed her in fierce despair against his heart as the ground moved
+gently under his feet, and prayed aloud to his God to bring the riven
+walls down upon them there in the moonlight, that in merciful death the
+awful fate of his beloved might be lifted from her.
+
+The only answer to the desperate prayer was silence and shadows
+enveloping them like a mantle, and he lifted his stern face to the
+radiance of the moon, with the light of battle in the grey eyes.
+
+"I will find a way out, dear heart," he cried, as he turned her face
+gently against his shoulder.  "There is a way and I will find it."  And
+he strode as hastily as the masses of fallen stone would allow him
+towards the door and the short path which would lead him to the water's
+edge and safety.
+
+As he skirted the half of the fallen altar which lay across the body of
+the priest, he paused for a moment and looked down upon the man who had
+won even in death.
+
+As he looked the fingers of the out-flung hands twitched, and a violent
+shiver shook the old frame.  Slowly, very slowly the gnarled old arms
+were gathered in under the breast as inch by inch the Hindu priest
+raised himself from the floor.  The lower limbs were hidden, crushed
+under the fallen stone, and the old head hung down between the
+shoulders, the grey hair tangled in a wreath of jasmin flower.
+
+He lifted his face, and the dim old eyes looked wistfully up into the
+grey ones staring down at him out of the shadows.
+
+"Thou hast conquered, sahib, thou hast conquered in love," he
+whispered.  "And she is safe, for behold my--my power--has gone--from
+her.  I--even I--have not obeyed, and my god--has destroyed me!"
+
+Lifting his voice he cried aloud and died.
+
+And as he died Leonie turned her face from the shelter of her lover's
+shoulder and closed her eyes, and opening them again laughed sweetly as
+she looked up into his face.
+
+"You, Jan, _you_!  Why--whatever has happened, and--why--wherever are
+we?"  And he looked down into the sweet face and laughed aloud, an
+exultant, ringing laugh which was caught and echoed and re-echoed from
+the dome until the place seemed filled with the sound of happiness.
+
+"There has been a bit of an earthquake, dear, and you got hit on the
+head by a piece of falling brick.  See, sweetheart," and he swept the
+masses of hair together and twisted it between her head and his coat,
+"turn your face this way until I have you safely out of here, it's nice
+and soft, and shut your eyes, darling----"
+
+"Yes! but," said Leonie, as she turned her face as bidden and closed
+her eyes with a sigh of great content, "but--but how did we escape?"
+
+"You were saved, dear!"
+
+"Saved!--from what?  By whom?"
+
+She tried to turn her head, but he held it pressed close against his
+heart.
+
+"From death--dear heart!"
+
+"And by whom--tell me--Jan--by whom?"
+
+Jan Cuxson paused a moment as he looked across towards the still figure
+of Madhu Krishnaghar stretched peacefully upon the ground.
+
+"By the whitest man that has ever lived, dear!--by him!"
+
+And he turned without another word and strode through the temple and
+out of the gates to the narrow way which led to safety.  And where the
+trees met in an arch above his head he stopped and looked back, and
+Leonie, turning her face, passed her hand wonderingly over the tousled
+masses of her hair and the silken drapery about her body.
+
+"Where are we going to?  Where are you taking me?"
+
+He shifted her completely into his left arm, pulled at a golden slender
+chain round her neck with his right hand, caught it in his strong white
+teeth and wrenched it in two.
+
+And he answered her as he flung the jewelled cat's-eye far out into the
+jungle.
+
+"To Devon, beloved, to Devon and happiness!"
+
+And as he closed her red mouth with kisses the earth shook gently under
+his feet, and the temple, with a terrific crash, caved in; burying for
+ever the dead priest, the broken image of Kali, the Goddess of
+Destruction, and Madhu Krishnaghar, son of princes, her splendid Indian
+lover.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Leonie of the Jungle, by Joan Conquest
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 15841-8.txt or 15841-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/8/4/15841/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
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diff --git a/15841-8.zip b/15841-8.zip
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+++ b/15841-8.zip
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+++ b/15841.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11136 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leonie of the Jungle, by Joan Conquest
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Leonie of the Jungle
+
+Author: Joan Conquest
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2005 [EBook #15841]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
+
+BY
+
+JOAN CONQUEST
+
+
+
+
+Author of "Desert Love"
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1921, by
+
+THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+
+THE SPLENDID NATIVE OF INDIA,
+
+THE LIVING
+
+
+MADHU KRISHNAGHAR
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: The name "Madhu" appears throughout this book.
+The "u" in it can be correctly rendered only in Unicode, as
+u-macron--uppercase U+016A, lowercase U+016B.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE WEST
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE EAST
+
+
+
+"And never the twain shall meet."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE WEST
+
+
+
+
+LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  "To deliver thee from the strange woman!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Who found the kitten?"
+
+"Me," quavered the childish voice.
+
+Lady Susan Hetth tchcked with her tongue against her rather prominent
+teeth at the lamentable lapse in grammar, and looked crossly at Leonie,
+who immediately lifted up the quavering voice and wept.
+
+Sobs too big for such a little girl shook the slender body, whilst
+great tears dripped from the long lashes to the tip of the upturned
+nose, down the chin and on the knee of the famous specialist, against
+which she rested.
+
+"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"
+
+The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a
+shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable
+eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so
+young.
+
+"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"
+
+The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of
+steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater
+facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.
+
+"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the
+shop to buy a big doll and _forget_ all about it!"
+
+"Please may I have a book instead of----"
+
+"Leonie, that is very rude."
+
+"Please, Lady Hetth.  Go on, darling---what kind of book."
+
+"'Bout tigers an' snakes, oh! an' elephants.  Weal animals.  Dolls, you
+know"--she smiled as she confided the great secret--"aren't weal
+_babies_, they're just full of sawdust."
+
+He lifted the child on to his knee, frowning at the weight, and
+smoothed the tangled mass of curls away from the low forehead with a
+touch which caused her to make a sound 'twixt sob and sigh, and to lie
+back against the broad shoulder.
+
+It was a long and disjointed story, told in the inconsequent fashion of
+a child of seven unused to converse with her elders; and continually
+interrupted by the aunt, who, fretful and dying for her tea, jingled
+her distracting bracelets and chains, fidgeted with the Anglo-Indian
+odds-and-ends of her raiment, and disconcerted the child by the futile
+verbal proddings; which are as bad for the infant mind as the criminal
+attempts to force a baby to use its legs are to the infant body.
+
+"So! and you found the dear little kitten lying quite still in the
+nursery this morning?"
+
+"Yes!  Stwangled!"
+
+"Do pronounce your _r_'s, Leonie."
+
+The child shivered in the man's arms.
+
+"Who told you it was strangled?"
+
+"Auntie!"
+
+The man's hand closed for a moment on a heavy paper-weight as he looked
+across the room at the woman who was waggling her foot and knitting her
+scanty brows at the sound of the rending sobs.
+
+"Auntie was mistaken, darling.  Kitty was asleep, tired out with
+playing or running away from the dog next door."
+
+Leonie shook her head.  "Kitty's dead," she wailed, "lying all black
+and quiet, like--like my dweams!"
+
+There was a moment's pregnant silence, during which Leonie turned round
+and snuffled into the great man's collar, and he frowned above the
+russet head as he drew a block of paper and pencil towards him.
+
+"What dreams, darling?"
+
+"Don' know--dweams I dweam!"
+
+The specialist sat still for a second and then laughed, the great kind
+laugh of a man with a big heart who adores children.
+
+"Let's play a game, Leonie!  You tell me about the dreams, and I'll
+tell you about my new motor-car, and the one who tells best will get a
+big sweet!"
+
+With a child's sudden change of mood Leonie sat up, swinging her black
+silk legs to and fro, her eyes dancing, her lips parted over the even
+little teeth.
+
+"I _love_ sweets!" said she.  "You begin!"
+
+"My car's grey!" said Sir Jonathan Cuxson.  "What colour are your
+dreams?"
+
+"_Black_!" was the unexpectedly decisive reply.  "Black with lots of
+wed--wet wed--and gween eyes--lots and lots of eyes--and--and soft
+things I can't see, and--noises like kit--kit--kitty makes when she
+purrs!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Yes! and people with soft feet like the--the slippers Nannie wears at
+night so that I can't hear them.  And--and that's all!"
+
+She laughed like the child she ought to have been as she bit the end
+off a big pink fondant which had materialised out of one of a dozen
+little drawers in the desk, then holding up the other end to the man
+laughed again spontaneously and delightfully as he pushed the sweet
+into her mouth.
+
+Then he put her on her feet, tilted the little white face back till the
+strong light shone into the opalescent, gold-flecked eyes, kissed the
+curly head and told her to run round the room, open the cabinet doors
+and look at the hidden treasures.
+
+"May I touch them?"
+
+"Of course, sweetheart!"
+
+"I'm vewy sowwy _you_ didn't win," she said in her old-fashioned way,
+"because you are vewy, vewy nice.  And"--she continued, suddenly
+harking hack as a child will to a previous remark--"and it is all vewy,
+vewy black, with a teeny, weeny light like the night-light Nannie
+lights, and----!"
+
+She stopped dead and buried her head in the middle of Sir Jonathan's
+waistcoat, fumbling his coat sleeves with her nervous little hands.
+
+"Yes, darling!" said the man, without a trace of expression in his
+voice as he held up a finger warningly to the woman who had rustled in
+her chair.
+
+"And--and sometimes there's a black woman.  And I'm--I'm fwightened of
+her 'cause she calls me, and--and--pulls me out of bed by my head."
+
+"How do you mean, darling?  Does she catch hold of your hair?  It must
+hurt you dreadfully!"
+
+Leonie suddenly stood up, nervously pulling at the man's top waistcoat
+button as she furtively glanced first over one shoulder and then over
+the other.
+
+"No! she doesn't touch me," she faltered, "and I--I don't always see
+her.  But--but"--she laid her open palm against her forehead in a
+curious little gesture suggestive of the East--"but she pulls me
+through my forehead, and when she pulls I've--I've _got_ to go!  May I
+_hold_ that elephant?"
+
+The brain specialist looked straight into the strange eyes which smiled
+confidingly back into his.
+
+"Just a moment, sweetheart," said he.  "What do your little friends,
+and Nannie, and Auntie say when you tell them about the dreams?"
+
+Leonie leant listlessly against the arm of the chair, and sighed as she
+flashed a lightning glance at her aunt who was turning over a
+periodical on a table by her side.
+
+"I don't tell Nannie because I think she wouldn't weally understand,
+and--and----"
+
+Silence.
+
+"Well, darling?"
+
+"Auntie," she spoke in the merest whisper, "got awful cwoss the first
+time I did tell her.  She was going out to a dance, and I was telling
+her whilst she was dwessing--it was a lovely dwess all sparkles and
+little wosebuds--and I upset a bottle of scent over her gloves.  The
+scent too was like my dweams, just like--like--oh! I don't know, and I
+haven't any!"
+
+Once more the man intuitively bridged the gulf.
+
+"No little friends?  How's that?"
+
+"Bimba died," she announced casually.  "She liked books, too.  It's
+vewy silly thinking dolls are babies, isn't it; that's why I love
+weading, it--it seems weal!"
+
+Lady Hetth broke in hurriedly.
+
+"We simply can't keep her away from books when she's in town.  Of
+course when we are in the country she simply lives out of doors.  It is
+very difficult to keep her amused.  She sulks when she goes to a party
+and always wants to go home!"
+
+"I don't sulk weally, Auntie, I jus'--jus' don' seem to know how to
+play!"
+
+She smiled a wan little smile at the woman who had no children of her
+own, and moved away slowly with a backward doggy look at the man.
+
+"Good God!" he muttered.  "Will you come here, Lady Hetth!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  "When your fear cometh as a desolation."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Susan Hetth rose.
+
+She had always intensely disliked her brother-in-law's old friend,
+failing utterly to perceive the heart of gold studded with rare gems
+that was hidden under a bushel of intentional brusqueness.
+
+But as she was under an obligation to him she decided to make herself
+as pleasant as possible, and to obey his orders, however irksome.
+
+Great brain specialist, great philanthropist, she had rung him up in a
+panic that morning after having vainly ransacked her memory for some
+other human being in whom she could with safety confide her fear, and
+from whom she could expect some meed of succour.
+
+She knew, as everybody knew, that years ago he had given up the hours
+of consultation which had seen his Harley Street waiting-room filled to
+overflowing; that little by little, bit by bit, indeed, he had given
+himself up entirely to research work, travelling in every quarter of
+the globe in his quest for the knowledge necessary to the alleviation
+of the mental troubles of his fellow-beings.  And that when he found it
+or some part of it he had hurried home, and having brought it to as
+near a state of perfection as possible, had flung it broad-cast to the
+suffering; just as he flung the immense sums of money he made among the
+destitute for whom he loved to work without thought of the morrow.
+
+A genuine case of trouble he had never been known to dismiss, and Susan
+Hetth had heaved a sigh of relief into the receiver when he fixed an
+immediate appointment.
+
+The spook of fear is not the cheeriest companion of the early cup of
+tea, and Nannie's words, allied to Nannie's face when she entered
+without knocking, had caused the silly, invertebrate woman to take
+immediate action for once in her life.
+
+Not for anything would she confess it, but she wished now she had
+listened to Nannie when, just a year ago, she had so fervently urged a
+visit to the doctor the first time she had discovered the baby girl
+walking downstairs one step at a time in her sleep.
+
+She remembered the way the ever-changing house-parlourmaids had
+furtively looked at the child when she came in to dessert; how one
+after the other they had given notice, declaring that although they
+really loved the child their nerves would not stand the ever-recurring
+shock of finding her sitting in some corner in the dark; or the
+pattering of her little feet on the stairs when she occasionally evaded
+the nurse and walked about the house in her sleep; and she remembered
+how other nurses who brought baby visitors to tea had watched the
+child, surreptitiously touching their foreheads and wagging their heads
+at each other.
+
+But, as is the way of the supine, she had put it off and put it off
+until her negligence had culminated in the frightful scene of this same
+very early morning, when Leonie, waking in the day nursery to find her
+kitten dead, had screamed and shrieked hour after hour until the
+house-parlourmaid had rushed in and given instant notice, with the
+unsolicited information that the servants thought, and the neighbours
+said, the child was mad and ought to be sent to a home.
+
+Then, indeed, had terror suddenly tweaked Susan Hetth's heart, the
+social one, the maternal one having long since atrophied through want
+of use; for the shadow of lunacy is about the blackest of all the
+shadows that can fall across a butterfly's sunny, heedless path.
+
+Ten years ago she had lost her husband, in the year following most of
+her capital had gone in a mad-cat speculation, and three years later
+her gallant brother-in-law died, leaving her a yearly income sufficient
+for expenses and education if she would undertake to mother his little
+daughter.  Since then she had led the usual abortive life of the woman
+who lives on the past glamour of her husband's success and a limited
+income, upon which she tries ineffectually to dovetail herself into a
+society to which she does not rightly belong.  Having noticed an
+increasing plenitude of silver among the ash-gold of her hair, a
+deepening of the lines of discord between her brows, and the threads of
+discontent which were daily being hemstitched into her face by the
+sharp needles of make-believe, covetousness, and a precarious banking
+account, she had recently decided to try and annex, or rather try and
+graft herself on to a certain unsuspecting male being _en secondes
+noces_.
+
+And that simply cannot be done if there is the slightest shadow upon
+one's appendages.
+
+So she sat down in the chair with as good a grace as she could muster,
+and arranged her big picture hat so that the spring sun should not draw
+Sir Jonathan's attention to the methods she employed to combat the
+rapidity with which what remained of her prettiness, prematurely faded
+by the Indian sun, was vanishing.
+
+For a long and trying moment he sat silently staring at her, wondering
+as he had always wondered what had induced his old friend to place his
+little girl in such inadequate, feeble hands.
+
+To break the tension Lady Hetth clanked a silver Indian bracelet bought
+at Liberty's against an Egyptian chain sold by Swan & Edgar's, and the
+man frowned as he drew a series of cats on his blotting-paper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  "Against stupidity the very gods
+  Themselves contend in vain!"--_Schiller_.
+
+
+"Let me see," he said slowly.  "You have been in India I believe.  I
+wonder if you know anything about it!"
+
+"I lived _ten_ years in the Punjab."  This information was given with
+the intense self-satisfaction peculiar to the feminine Anglo-Indian.
+"With my husband," was added after a rather damping silence, "who was
+knighted for certain--er--work he did in the Indian Civil Service."
+
+"That doesn't mean that you know anything about the country, Mam.
+Leonie has been with you almost seven years, please correct me if I
+make any mistake.  She is seven this month you say.  She was four
+months old when she came over from India.  Did her ayah come with her,
+by the way?  No!  Had she been good to the baby--yes! yes! I know, they
+always are, but these dreams indicate that the child has been badly
+frightened some time or another!"
+
+"But she _couldn't_ be frightened at four months," vacantly interrupted
+Susan Hetth, who could not see the trend of the conversation, or the
+need of the detailed interrogation.  "She would be _far_ too young!"
+
+"Too _young_!" snapped Sir Jonathan.  "Rubbish!  Do you know why you
+are afraid to-day of falling from a height?"
+
+"No," replied Susan Hetth, cordially loathing the man, his methods, and
+his manners.
+
+"Because," he answered roughly, "you were frightened of falling from
+your mother's or your nurse's arms when you were a few months old, and
+the impression of height and fear made upon your baby mind is still
+with you, _that's_ why!"
+
+"The brute!" she thought, as she smiled the propitiatory smile of one
+who is afraid and murmured, "How very interesting!"
+
+"Is there anything else you can tell me about your little niece? no
+matter how trivial a detail!  Has she ever screamed for hours as she
+screamed this morning?  Does she get angry?  I mean mad angry!"
+
+"No!" replied the aunt.  "From what her nurse and daily governess tell
+me she seems to be _remarkably_ sweet-tempered.  You see I don't--I
+haven't--I don't see much of her.  I'm--I've--you see I have _so_ many
+friends over here!"
+
+The man snorted.
+
+"I must say," she continued, "I have _never_ met a child so averse from
+being kissed or being made a fuss of--she _hates_ anyone to touch her,
+even--even _me_, her _mother_, as you might say; but they say she is
+tractable, and has never been known to lose her temper, or slap, or
+scratch, as some children do--no! there is _really_ nothing to tell
+about her--of course she walks a bit in her sleep, at least so her
+Nannie says!"
+
+The specialist's hand crashed on the table.  "Good God, woman!" he
+flung at her, "what in heaven's name _are_ you modern women made of?
+How long has she been walking in her sleep?  Tell me all you know _at
+once_--and remember it's your niece's _brain_ and her future you are
+talking about, so try and describe this sleep-walking with as much
+interest and regard to detail as you would if you were talking about a
+new dress.  Why in heaven's name didn't you send her with the
+nurse--the _servant_--instead of coming yourself--I might have learnt
+something about the child _then_!"
+
+It seemed that Leonie while still quite a baby had walked about the
+night nursery in her sleep; that she had been found in the day nursery
+and on the lower landing, but had always gone back to bed without
+waking; that she muttered a lot of rubbish which the nurse could not
+understand, and was always very tired next day.  That now that she was
+older she slept in a room by herself as she became unaccountably
+restless and wide awake if anyone slept in the room with her.  No! the
+nurse had never noticed the hour or the date, or anything, and that was
+really all, and "couldn't you give the child a dose of bromide."
+
+Which sentence served to finish the history and to bring Sir Jonathan
+with a bound from his chair.
+
+"Bromide," he snarled, "_bromide_!  Now, Lady Hetth, listen to me.
+There is something more than nerves and a highly strung temperament in
+this.  Next week I want Nannie, not _you_, to bring the child here on a
+visit.  I know India and her religions as far as any Englishman dare
+say he knows anything about that unfathomable country--yes! Mam!
+religions--Hinduism--Brahminism--Buddhism--why, I've passed the best
+part of my life trying to unravel certain physical and psychical
+threads knotted up in India; but the years are slipping by, and time is
+getting shorter and shorter, and but a tithe done out of all there is
+to do; but thanks be, my boy has inherited my love for this work, and
+will carry on here when I have crossed the threshold and found the
+solutions to my problems on the other side.  Though I'm sure I don't
+know why I'm telling _you_ all this," he finished brusquely, "we will
+return to India."
+
+"Yes!  India is very, very interesting!" piped Lady Hetth, rising and
+standing on one foot so as to rest the other suffering from an
+oversmall shoe.
+
+"Very, _very_ interesting!" she continued unctuously and with the
+enthusiasm she reserved as a rule for the S.P.C.K.I, which letters
+stand for an attempt to graft a new creed on to the tree of religion in
+India which was bearing _fruit_ at a period when we were hobnobbing in
+caves, with a boulder or good stout club as reasons for existence.
+
+"I'll write and tell you when to send the child and her nurse, and
+between us we'll manage to keep her amused.  And in the meantime stop
+all lessons and let her do exactly as she likes, and feed her up, Mam,
+feed her up, her bones are simply coming through her skin."
+
+Again he laughed a great rumbling laugh, as lifting the child from the
+ground he felt the little hands in his mane of white hair.
+
+"You're nice," she decided, "vewy nice."
+
+"Like to come and stay with me?"
+
+"Oh, yes! if you won't--won't make me----!"
+
+She stopped short.
+
+"Well! what--won't make you what?"
+
+"Nothing--Auntie pulled my dwess!"
+
+The door closed softly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  "The kindest man,
+  The best conditioned and unwearied spirit
+  In doing courtesies."--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+They met on the threshold.
+
+Swinging back the door to let Leonie and her aunt out, Ellen, the
+middle-aged maid, almost an heirloom in the family of Cuxson, bristling
+in starched cap and apron, let in the erstwhile plague of her life, but
+now as ever the light of her eyes, Jonathan Cuxson, Junior.
+
+He took Lady Hetth's hand in a mighty and painful grip when after a
+moment's hesitation she introduced herself.
+
+"Why, of course!  You must be Jan!  Except for being bigger you haven't
+changed a bit since I saw you years ago one Speech Day at Harrow!"  She
+looked with open admiration at the very personable young man before her
+who loomed large in the hall with his height of six feet two and a
+tremendous width of shoulder.  His eyes were grey, and as honest as a
+genuine fine day; the jaw was just saved from a shadow of brutality in
+its strength by a remarkably fine mouth; the ears were splendid from an
+intellectual point of view, and the set of the head on the neck, and
+the neck on the shoulders, perfect.  The nose was a good nose, rather
+broad at the top, with those delicate sensitive nostrils which usually
+spell trouble for the owner.
+
+"I don't believe you remember me!"
+
+Happily the reply which must have been untrue or given in the negative
+was averted by the hilarious arrival of a puppy.
+
+Having heard the deep voice associated in its canine mind with bits of
+cake and joyous roughs-and-tumbles, it had forsaken the happy though
+forbidden hunting ground of the upper storeys and negotiated the stairs
+in a series of bumps and misses.
+
+Arrived in the hall it hurled itself blindly against Leonie's ankles,
+and ricocheted on to its master's boots, where it essayed a _pas seul_
+on its hind legs in its efforts to reach the strong brown hand.
+
+"Oh!" said Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched
+to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which
+thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front
+ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three
+times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes
+and trickled down the white face.
+
+"Hello, kiddie!  You're crying!" said Jan Cuxson, who like his father
+had a positive mania for protecting and helping those in trouble, which
+mania got him into an infinite and varied amount of trouble himself,
+and led him into unexpected boles and corners of the earth.  "I'm--I'm
+not crying weally!" choked Leonie, "it's--it's my kitten!"
+
+"Oh! do stop, Leonie!" said her aunt, leaning down to catch the child's
+hand and pull her to her feet.  "She's coming to stay with you," she
+added, as Leonie stood quite still with that piteous jerk of the chin
+which comes from suppressed and overwhelming grief, as she watched the
+puppy play a one-sided game of bumblefoot in a corner.
+
+"That's jolly," said the young man.
+
+"Oh! she's coming as a case.  She walks a good deal in her sleep, and
+as my brother-in-law, Colonel Hetth, if you remember, was such a----"
+
+But Jan Cuxson was not listening.
+
+He too had put his hand on the curly head and tilted it back gently so
+that the light shone into the sorrow-laden eyes encircled by shadows.
+
+Then he smiled suddenly down at the mite, and she, perceiving that a
+ray of light had suddenly pierced the all-pervading gloom, smiled back,
+and catching his left hand in both of hers pressed it to her forehead.
+
+"Good Lord!" he muttered, as a thrill ran through him at the unexpected
+and oriental action.
+
+And Fate, plucking in senile fashion at the loose ends which lay
+nearest her old hand, knotted two tightly together with a bit of rare
+golden strand she kept tucked away in her bodice.
+
+"And what shall we do when you come?  Can you ride?  I know of a lovely
+pony a little boy rides!"
+
+Leonie shook her head mournfully, feeling unconsciously but acutely the
+penalty of her sex for the first time in her life.
+
+"I can't wide astwide," she sighed, "I haven't any bweeches.  Jill and
+Maudie Wetherbourne always wide in skirts.  But I can swim," she added
+quickly, "an' jump in out of my depff.  I learnt in the baff at the
+seaside!"
+
+"Oh! come along, child, _do_!" broke in her aunt to her own undoing.
+
+"Auntie jumps in too, though she says she doesn't," proceeded Leonie in
+a gallant effort to shore up her family's sporting reputation.
+
+"I do _not_, Leonie!  I can't imagine how you ever got such an idea
+into your head!"
+
+But Leonie, nothing daunted, shook back her russet mop of hair and gave
+direct answer, to the confusion of the domestic who happily stood out
+of Lady Hetth's eye-range.
+
+"But, Auntie!  I've _often_ heard Wilkins tell Nannie that you've been
+in off the deep end before bweakfast!  Oh! do let me hold him just for
+ever such a little while!"
+
+To save the expression of his face Jan Cuxson had bent and lifted the
+pup by the scruff of its neck, and upon the piteous appeal put it
+squirming and wriggling in the outstretched arms.
+
+Great tears dripped all over the animal though Leonie stood on one
+foot, bit her underlip, and squeezed the puppy to suffocation in a
+valiant effort to restrain this appalling sign of weakness.
+
+"Tell me what makes you cry like that?"
+
+"My--my kitten was--was stwangled by--by someone this morning, an'--an'
+she was all soft an'--an' fluffy like----"
+
+The words ended in a paroxysm of sobs muffled in the puppy's coat
+whereupon it ecstatically licked every visible part of the child's
+neck, whilst Ellen, throwing decorum to the winds, knelt down and drew
+the shaking little figure into her arms.
+
+"Anybody in there!" suddenly and very gruffly asked Jan Cuxson, jerking
+his head in the direction of the room where the few and favoured
+awaited the pleasure of the specialist.
+
+"No, Sir," replied Ellen, as she disentangled one of the puppy's claws
+from the lace on Leonie's sleeve.  "I'm going to call my father!  I
+don't think you understand your little girl very well!"
+
+He spoke quite gently but his face was white with anger, that almost
+terrifying rage which surges over and through the mentally and
+physically strong at the sight, or thought, of cruelty to the small and
+weak.
+
+He whistled two exceedingly sharp notes and plunged his hands into his
+pockets, where he scrunched up his keys and some loose change.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"The liberal soul shall be made fat."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Well! well! well!"
+
+Sir Jonathan walked over to the child and knelt down beside her as the
+maid rose and straightened her crumpled apron.
+
+"Let me have the doggie, darling!"
+
+"No!--no!--_no_!  I--I love him.  He's all soft and cuddley.  I want to
+hold him for jus' a little, little longer!"
+
+The child's voice was shrill with excitement as she pulled back from
+the encircling arms, her lips quivering, her eyes staring distractedly
+first at the younger man then at the dog.
+
+"Would you like to have Jingles, kiddie?"
+
+The change in the child's face was electrifying, and Sir Jonathan,
+rising with his eyes fixed upon her, touched his son's arm to draw his
+attention to it.
+
+Tears like dewdrops on brown pansy petals hung heavily from the lashes,
+but the corners of the mouth turned up in an adorable smile, and waves
+of gratitude and delight swept up from chin to brow obliterating the
+agony of the past hours.
+
+"For _me_--to _keep_?" she whispered, as she stood on her toes in an
+instinctive effort to make the body reach and unite with the mind at
+the highest point of this most perfect moment, whilst her little breast
+heaved with the repressed sobs of her fully laden heart.
+
+"Yes! for keeps, little one!"
+
+The three elders stood silently, the specialist watching intently the
+light which kindled in the child's eyes as she looked from one to the
+other before she bent her head over the dog she had completely
+surrounded with her arms.
+
+Jan Cuxson made a movement to end a situation which was bordering on
+cruelty when Lady Hetth anticipated him with her customary dire
+tactlessness.
+
+"There now, Leonie!  _Now_ perhaps you'll be satisfied.  Give Mr.
+Cuxson a kiss and say thank you nicely!"
+
+Leonie would have cheerfully put her hand in the fire to serve this
+wonderful being who royally distributed gifts, and _live_ ones at that,
+and only hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before, her face
+suffused with crimson, she walked up to him.
+
+"Of course if--if you want me to--I'll--I'll kiss you," she said
+heroically, unconsciously squeezing the puppy under the stress of the
+awful moment until it yelped, "but I'd--I'd wather----"  She stopped
+and looked up hurriedly into the understanding face of the elder man.
+
+He nodded as he caught her eye so that she finished all in a hopeful
+burst.
+
+"But I'd wather not if you don't mind!"
+
+Lady Hetth frowned and put out her hand, murmuring something about
+really having to go.
+
+"I'll send for her and Nannie, Lady Hetth.  And keep her out of doors
+as much as possible.  Why don't you take her to the Zoo this afternoon?"
+
+"I couldn't _possibly_!" came the prompt and irritable reply.
+
+"What about me!" interrupted Jan Cuxson.  "Eh! kiddie?  You and I
+riding big, fat elephants at the Zoo!"
+
+"_You_--and _Jingles_--and _me_!" said Leonie, disengaging her hand
+from her aunt's.  "And you," she said sweetly, laying it on the elder
+man's coat sleeve.
+
+Heaven had opened wide its gates and she was for pulling everybody in
+with her, and her eyes danced, and so did her patent shod feet on the
+rug.
+
+"It's _too_ kind of you, Jan!" broke in her aunt.  "I really don't like
+to let you waste your time with a child!"
+
+"Not at all, Lady Hetth!  I love kids--and the Zoo.  Where shall I
+bring her to afterwards?"
+
+"Oh!  Yes! bring her to the Ladies' Union Club where I am staying.  No!
+you'd better take her to her Nannie as they don't allow children in the
+Club, thank goodness.  They are staying in York Street, Baker Street,
+quite convenient for you."
+
+She trailed through the door as she spoke, pouring out a cascade of
+vapid thanks and announcing also that she had shopping to do at
+Debenham and Freebody's.
+
+She hadn't, she was going to catch an omnibus in Cavendish Square,
+being of those who, blindly extravagant in most things, think they
+economise when spoiling their clothes and temper in a penny ha'penny
+bus, instead of keeping both unruffled in a taxi, at two shillings.
+
+Ellen, returning later triumphantly with a taxi, held wide the door, a
+wide and loving smile across her plain face.
+
+"You come too, Sir," said Jan Cuxson.  "Do you heaps of good to ride an
+elephant!"
+
+"I only wish I could, boy," said the man as he laid one hand on the
+shoulder of the son he loved, and the other on Leonie's head.  "But
+I've much to do in that opium case, and I'm dining out, and shall read
+a bit when I get back----"
+
+"And I'm dining out too, more's the nuisance, otherwise I could help.
+Sure to be awfully late as it's a farewell dinner to a fellow at the
+hospital----"
+
+"Well!  See you in the morning!  Good-bye, sweetheart, I won't forget
+the book, and just you make that lazy fellow show you everything!"
+
+He bent and kissed Leonie as she lifted her face, which was an
+unheard-of thing for her to do, and watched her as, hugging the
+struggling dog, she ran down the steps and was lifted into the taxi by
+her companion.
+
+With his foot on the step Jan hesitated, then turned and walked back to
+his father.
+
+"I don't know why.  Sir, but I do wish you'd come too," he said slowly,
+looking at the man he loved with a love past the comprehension of the
+younger generation of the present day.
+
+He put out his hand as he spoke and gripped the elder man's hard, then
+ran down the steps, jumped in beside Leonie, and turned to wave
+hilariously with her as they sped away to the Zoo.
+
+The brain specialist went back thoughtfully to his room, and when he
+had closed the door stood for a long time looking out at the little
+garden with its one big tree.
+
+"I wonder, I _wonder_," he mused.  "I'd give a good deal to get at that
+ayah--well! why not?--I could start for----"  He looked round suddenly,
+then laughed as he passed his hand over his eyes.  "Funny!  I thought
+someone opened the door."
+
+He moved to his desk and turned over his diary, showing blank page
+after blank page.
+
+"Strange," he muttered.  "There is nothing written down after to-day,
+not a single engagement.  I must have entered them in some other book;
+very careless of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  "And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry
+  in their desolate homes."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Gawd!"
+
+Mrs. Henry Higgins called upon the Almighty in the vernacular of Seven
+Dials, sought gropingly for the members of her progeny who clutched her
+skirt, and fortunately kept her head.
+
+"'Enery James--no!  Gertrude Ellen--you've gotter better headpiece,
+jest yer slip along to the keeper an' tell _'im_ to look slippy and
+come along quick _h'and_ quiet!"
+
+Gertrude Ellen, puffed up with pride at the pull she had had over her
+brother, slipped off, as her mother continued in a raucous whisper,
+"Now if that young miss don't deserve a thorough good 'iding!  I'd take
+the skin off yer if any of yer did such a fing, strite I would.  Drat
+yer, keep stilt cawn't yer--you'll rouse the brute!"
+
+She shook her skirts so that the half-dozen clinging children rattled
+like a bunch of keys, pushed her jet bonnet back from the shiny
+wrinkled forehead, and waited, her motherly heart aquake in spite of
+her drastic language.
+
+Jan Cuxson was standing in front of the lions' cage at one end of the
+lion-house, talking to his old friend the keeper, under the impression
+that Leonie was close beside him; but she, having taken advantage of
+their conversation and a practically empty house, had slipped quietly
+away, climbed the barrier near the far window, and was _also_ holding
+conversation--with a tiger from Bengal.
+
+The animal lay outstretched with his wonderful head close to the bars,
+and his unblinking opalescent gold-flecked eyes staring straight into
+the opalescent gold-flecked eyes of the child as she stood on tip-toe
+so that her face was almost on a level with that of the animal.
+
+"_Poor_ tiger!" she was saying.  "I'm vewwy sowwy for you--I'm sure
+you're not so vewy, vewy wicked, an' if you will bend your head I will
+stwoke you behind the ear same as I did Kitty."
+
+Mrs. Henry Higgins gasped.
+
+Holding on to one bar tightly just near the tiger's mouth so as to
+steady herself, Leonie stretched, and thrusting her hand inside began
+to rub the tiger's head quite forcibly behind the ear.
+
+"Nice?" she inquired as the animal closed its eyes under the unexpected
+and unexperienced caress, then opening them lifted the beautiful head
+and yawned to the full capacity of the huge mouth, affording Leonie a
+front row view of the splendid ivories and pale pink tongue.
+
+"Oh--h--h!" said she admiringly, standing flat and patting the nearest
+paw.  "I _do_ like you though you _do_ fwighten me when you walk so
+softly in my dweams--oh--h--h!"
+
+She shivered with ecstasy as the tiger rolled on its back, displaying
+its soft white belly as it bit its hind foot with the abandon of a
+baby, then turned on its side, and leaping sideways to its feet, slunk
+off to the far corner of the miserable den, which is all a civilised
+country gives a wild animal in exchange for its jungle home.
+
+Meanwhile the Higgins brood, like hungry sparrows on a rail, were
+sitting open-mouthed on the lower steps provided for the benefit of
+those spectators who wish to revel with safety in the degrading sight
+of the royal beasts fed with lumps of bleeding meat pushed through the
+lower bar on the end of a prong.
+
+Rendered somewhat incoherent by fear, and haste, allied to the ghastly
+English she had acquired in the streets and been allowed to retain in
+the Council School, Gertrude Ellen had found it somewhat difficult to
+arouse the keeper to a realisation of the impending disaster.
+
+But when he _did_ look over his shoulder in the direction her dirty
+little hand was pointing he swore a mighty oath and acted promptly.
+
+"Keep still, Sir, for the love of heaven!" he whispered, catching hold
+of Jan Cuxson's arm as the latter made a step forward.  "Don't let that
+there animal see yer, he's the blamedest, cussedest brute I've ever had
+to do with.  Never had a civil growl from him since he came here over
+three years ago."
+
+Whilst speaking the man had hurriedly discarded his boots and climbed
+inside the barrier, whilst Cuxson held the child quiet by her thin
+little shoulders.
+
+"Damn that woman," went on the keeper, "why can't she keep still.  Sure
+as blazes if that there tiger sees her, which don't mean if he's
+_looking_ at her, he'll go nasty and have that missy's 'and off."
+
+Mrs. Higgins, having clumped her brood into silence, was making frantic
+and what she imagined to be surreptitious signals of distress with her
+left arm, keeping her eyes glued on Leonie, who was clinging to the
+bars with both hands whilst calling upon the tiger to come back.
+
+He came back, half crouched, noiselessly, stealthily, the hair of the
+belly almost touching the ground, for all the world like a cat about to
+spring upon an unsuspecting sparrow.
+
+He came to a standstill within an inch of the bars and threw his
+pointed ears straight forward so that they stood out at right angles to
+the beautifully marked face; spasmodically twitched back the mouth
+without a sound issuing therefrom, and then lay down and pressed his
+head against the bars.
+
+The tiny hand was stroking the silky ears, patting the head, and
+prodding contentedly into the thick fur of the neck when suddenly with
+a mighty heart-quaking roar the tiger leapt up and back, and then
+hurled himself at the bars.
+
+The keeper had crept, bent double, along the inside of the barrier, and
+had most suddenly and surprisingly seized Leonie by the waist and
+wrenched her free from the bars to which she had tried to cling,
+holding her like a vice in his arms where she vainly kicked and
+struggled for freedom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  ". . . that man could not be altogether cleared
+  from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now
+  does."--_Plutarch_.
+
+
+The whole house was in an uproar.
+
+The lions were trotting round and round, stopping to listen and snuff in
+the sawdust near the bars; the stumpy jaguar, black as ink, with a body
+like a steel case, was rushing up and down, rubbing its forehead fiercely
+as it turned; a lion and his mate were rearing themselves one after the
+other against the walls, half turning from the middle to fall almost
+backward in that peculiar movement which reminds one forcibly of great
+succeeding waves stopped and thrown back upon themselves by some bleak
+rock.
+
+People were pushing and straining to look in at the windows, and rattling
+the doors which had been hurriedly locked by the keepers who had rushed
+to ascertain the cause of the tumult, whilst the tiger made the place
+resound with its terrific roars as it hurled its huge weight again and
+again at the bars of its cage.
+
+"Come _on_, Mother," shouted the keeper above the din, "bring all those
+children and let's get out.  They'll quieten down when we've gone.  Can't
+you _read_!"
+
+He shook Leonie slightly under the stress of his agitation as he hauled
+her in front of the notice which commands you to refrain from climbing
+the barrier.
+
+"Of course I can wead," she replied with dignity; "I'm weading the
+little----"
+
+"Well! read _that_!"
+
+"But--but"--stammered Leonie, having read with difficulty--"but I knew
+the tiger, Mr. Keeper!"
+
+"_Oh_! yes! of course!  You were tiger 'unting and brought him from the
+Sunderbunds about four years ago; it wasn't the gentleman, of course not!"
+
+"But weally," pleaded Leonie with the tears very near, "weally I've--I've
+dweamed lots about him, and--and--and----"
+
+"Take her away, Sir--she makes me see red she does.  No thank you.
+Sir--very much obliged, but it's part of my duty to see that people
+_don't_ climb the barrier, and I kind of failed--p'raps the little girl
+what came and----"
+
+They were outside by this time and the centre of an interested admiring
+crowd; it is only bleeding meat at three o'clock as a rule which can
+rouse the inhabitants of the lion house from their prison apathy.
+
+Taking the dirty little paw Cuxson, crumpling up a note, put it into the
+dirty little palm and closed the fingers tightly over it.  Whereupon
+Gertrude Ellen blushed furiously, and went to her mother with her
+clenched fist behind her back, where she kept it stiffly until tea-time,
+when she held out the bit of paper without a word, to the tune of "Lawks
+a mercy me!" from her mother, who immediately ordered more buns on the
+strength of it.
+
+"Lor' bless yer, lovey!" said Mrs. Higgins, whose bonnet was bobbing on
+the nape of her neck, leaving the wisps of hair to straggle
+unrestrainedly in the honest grey eyes, as she knelt on the ground and
+tugged Leonie's short skirts into place.  "Yer did give us a turn,
+dearie; yer might 'av 'ad yer 'and nipped orf by that there brute.  Come
+'_ere_, Lil and 'Erb--I'll 'ave yer eaten by the camuls next!"
+
+The bow-legged twins, with their spirit of adventure quashed, rolled back
+to mother, and stood wide-eyed as she ran her work-worn hand through the
+stranger's luxuriant curls.
+
+"Give us a kiss, lovey, an' go an' get some tea!"
+
+For the second time that day Leonie moved to obey the same command, but
+this time there was no hesitation as she put her thin arms round the
+woman's neck and kissed her sweetly once and again.
+
+And the woman, who sensed something amiss in the quivering little body,
+held her firmly, patting her gently with the same hand which dealt out
+indiscriminately such resounding and often well-earned smacks among her
+own; and Leonie sighed and leant confidingly against the stout, badly
+corseted figure.
+
+"How comfy," she whispered shyly.  "How soft you are.  Auntie never holds
+me in her arms, and when Nannie does she's always full of bits of things
+that stick _out_."
+
+And then with a little scream of delight she was away, speeding over the
+gravel in the wake of a lumbering great form wending its way in and out
+of the crowd.
+
+"Cut along, Sir, or you'll find her 'obnobbing with the gorilla next!
+I've never _seen_ such a child for downright mischievousness."
+
+Cuxson cut along as bidden and for all he was worth, pulling Leonie up in
+front of the ticket office for elephant rides, and after purchasing
+tickets sidetracked her to a tea-table.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"Mind you bring Jingles when you come to stay!"
+
+"Pwomise," called back Leonie from her Nannie's arms as she opened the
+door to them and lifted the tired happy child from the taxi.
+
+But she didn't because she never went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  "And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
+  Against the use of nature.  Present fears
+  Are less than horrible imaginings."--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+Big Ben announced the approaching hour of midnight, throwing the
+sonorous notes to the soft spring wind which wafted them up to Harley
+Street.
+
+Save for the light thrown by the dancing flames of a log fire, and the
+orange disc made on the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, the
+room was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional crackle of the
+wood fire and the faint rustle as Sir Jonathan turned a page.
+
+"Notes" was written in letters of brass across the thick book heavily
+bound in leather, and of which the small key to the massive Bramah lock
+was kept in a pocket especially made in every waistcoat Sir Jonathan
+possessed.
+
+Slowly he read through the page he had just written, crossing a t,
+dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which was
+in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he had
+read he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, and
+pushed the book further back on to the desk.
+
+It is an eerie sound that of someone speaking aloud to himself, and
+still more eerie when it occurs in the middle of the night when the
+only part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong white hands
+moving in the orange disc thrown on the desk by the heavily shaded lamp.
+
+And it is a strange habit this talking aloud of the solitary soul.
+
+Mad?
+
+Not a bit.
+
+Dumb in the babel and din of chaotic midday, unresponsive to the
+uncongenial matter around, it will talk on subjects gay and grave, and
+even laugh with the silent sympathetic shades of midnight.
+
+Nevertheless it is mighty eerie to hear it unawares.
+
+For the twentieth time the famous specialist picked up a letter and
+read it from beginning to end.
+
+"Strange, Jim, old fellow," said he as he laid it down, "strange how I
+think of you to-night.  Seeing your little one, I suppose.  But somehow
+to-night more than ever I feel the blank you made in my life when you
+left.  How you'd have loved the kiddie, Jim.  Strange wee soul with a
+shadow already on her life--a big black shadow, Jim, which I--I am
+going----!"
+
+He turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Ugh!" he said, as he turned back to the desk and drew the book towards
+him.
+
+"Leonie Hetth--age seven--walks in her sleep and dreams--dreams are
+evidently of India--things that walk softly and purr--a small
+light--and wet red which may mean blood--green eyes and a black woman
+who--who----"
+
+Once more he ran his hand through his hair, but time irritably, then
+shook his head from side to side rubbed his hand across his eyes.
+
+"I've been sitting up too late these last few nights over that opium
+case.  Don't seem to be able to collect or hold my thoughts.  Jim, old
+fellow, I wonder what made you leave Leonie in the care of that damn
+silly, shallow woman, and I wonder how you could ever have produced
+anything so highly strung and temperamental as your little daughter.  I
+sup----"
+
+He stopped quite suddenly and rose, standing with his head bent forward.
+
+There was not a sound!
+
+Feeling for the arm of his chair with his face still turned to the
+curtained window he sank back, only to spring upright with a bound.
+
+Noiselessly, swiftly he crossed to the window, and pulling back the
+curtain an inch or two peered out into the small garden with its one
+tree and border of shrubs.
+
+There was no sound and nothing moved.
+
+"Strange!" he muttered, "I could have sworn some-one knocked."
+
+He jerked back the curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod,
+letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew a
+nimbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced and
+gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and in
+and out of the open safe.
+
+He turned, but stopped abruptly when half-way across the room, standing
+stock still with his back to the window.
+
+There was a faint distinct tapping as though slender fingers were
+beating a ghastly, distant drum.
+
+It stopped--it continued--it stopped.
+
+Then fell one little solitary rap like a drop of water falling on a
+metal plate, and it died away into silence.
+
+And Sir Jonathan threw up his fine old head and laughed.
+
+"Surely I've got India on the brain to-night, and as surely I want a
+good long holiday," he said, as he sat down at his desk and picked up
+his pen.  "And I must remember to tell the gardener to clip that tree
+to-morrow.  How Jan will laugh when I tell him that I was absolutely
+scared by a branch rubbing against the window."
+
+For five long minutes he sat frowning down at the pen in his hand.
+Three times he commenced to write, and three times he stopped; twice he
+lit a cigarette and let it go out, and deeper grew the lines between
+the brows and round the mouth, until he shivered and turned quickly in
+his chair.
+
+"That felt just like a sea-fog creeping up behind; stupid to keep the
+window open even in spring," he said as he picked up a log from a
+basket by his side and threw it deftly into the wide-open grate, leant
+sideways to separate two brass ornaments on a table which had jangled
+one against the other, and sighing turned restlessly in his chair.
+
+"Confound those great market lorries," he muttered, looking round the
+room with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange and weird,
+beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought back from every corner of
+the globe.  "They shake the house enough to bring it down about one's
+ears."
+
+The moon was slowly shifting as he leant back and settled himself
+comfortably in the high leather chair; the room was getting darker and
+there had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness which envelops
+most great cities after midnight, and against which his thoughts stood
+out like steel points upon a velvet curtain.
+
+Clear and sharp as steel they shot indeed, this way and that through
+his mind; but hold them he could not, analyse or arrange them he could
+not, neither would his hand move towards the pen a few inches from the
+finger-tips.
+
+"God!" he suddenly thundered, striking the arm of the chair with his
+fist.  "The answer is just there on the tip of my tongue--before my
+very eyes--within reach of my fingers, and yet I cannot grasp it--ah!
+why! could it _possibly_ be----"
+
+He rose as he spoke and crossed to a massive bookcase packed to
+overflowing with books, switched on a light hanging near, opened the
+glass door and ran his hand lovingly over the leather volumes.
+
+Then he very gently laid his hand on his left shoulder and turned with
+a smile lighting up his face, which abruptly went blank in astonishment.
+
+"Upon my word," he said, "whatever made me think that Jan had come in
+and had put his hand upon my shoulder.  Old fool that I am to-night."
+
+For a moment he stood looking into the shadowy corners, then turned
+again to the case, ran his finger along a row of books until he came to
+one with the title "India," pulled it out and opened it under the light.
+
+The book opened quite suddenly and wide, and his eyes fell on the first
+few lines.  Without a movement he stood staring down at the printed
+words, reading to the end of the page, then he violently closed the
+book, thrust it back into the case, and closing the doors, pressed
+against them with both hands as though in an endeavour to keep back
+something which was trying to get out.
+
+"No! my God!  No! never! not that--not _that_ as an end--not for _that_
+baby--and yet----"
+
+He moved across to the desk, sank heavily like a very old man into his
+chair and covered his face with his hands.
+
+Then very slowly and as though against his will he uncovered his face,
+and leaning forward stared across to the bookcase whilst he groped for
+the pen beside the book.
+
+"And the cure," he muttered, "the remedy--I _must_ find it--I--I----"
+
+His heart was thudding heavily with the merest suspicion of a complete
+pause between the beats, his hand trembled almost imperceptibly, whilst
+his eyes glanced questioningly this way and that.
+
+"I don't understand, I don't understand!" he whispered, just like a
+frightened child as he plucked at his collar and moved his head quickly
+from side to side as though trying to loosen some stranglehold about
+his neck.
+
+He turned and stared unseeingly into the fire with the look of
+perplexity deepening on his face, then slowly he raised his eyes, first
+to the delicate tracings of the Adams mantelpiece, then to the varied
+ornaments on the shelf.
+
+"Tish!" he said impatiently as they roved from the central figure of
+benign undisturbed Buddha, to a snake of brass holding a candle, and on
+to a blatant and grotesque dragon from China.
+
+For a second he stared uncomprehendingly, then raised his head.
+
+Inch by inch his eyes moved until they reached the top shelf of the
+overmantel and stopped.  A shiver shook him as he lay back in his
+chair, his widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny bead
+of perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.
+
+Staring down at him, shining evilly in the moonlight, was a glistening,
+unwavering eye.
+
+Just a slanting mother-o'-pearl eye in the battered head of a god or
+goddess of India, with features almost obliterated by the passage of
+centuries.
+
+For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat staring up at the eye which stared
+back; then moving with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through the
+mane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing load from about
+his head; and turning sideways in his chair stretched out one hand
+between the eye above and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in the
+shaking fingers.
+
+"Ah! my God!" he muttered, "the answer is still there, on the tip of my
+tongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers, and I cannot grasp
+it--ah!--yes----"
+
+Slowly and with infinite pain he wrote, printing the letters in thick
+and crooked capitals, whilst his breath whistled through the dilated
+nostrils and one foot beat unceasingly against the desk.
+
+"The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is in the third
+volume upon----"
+
+His hand stopped suddenly when the fingers involuntarily spread wide
+apart, letting fall the pen which rolled across the book; and the
+silvery head turned inch by inch until the grey eyes had lifted to the
+one shining in the shadows.
+
+And there commenced a desperate, a bitter struggle for a child's
+reason, perhaps for a child's life, as the moon gently withdrew her
+light.
+
+Like the clammy wraiths of fog upon the moor, like the searching
+tentacles of some blind monster of the sea, fear crept upon the
+splendid old man in this still hour of the night.
+
+It held his hands, it was folded about his mouth, it pounded violently
+upon his gallant heart, whilst the eye looked him between the eyes, so
+that his brain was seared as strive he might to turn away his head he
+kept his face turned piteously upward.
+
+"What is it," he muttered thickly, as though his tongue clove to the
+roof of the mouth, "what is it that is pulling me, pressing upon me,
+choking me!  I have no body, no--no hands--I--have--no power to
+move--I----"
+
+And then he screamed, though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodic
+jump of his whole body he flung himself round in his chair, and
+cowering low against the arm, peered into the deepening shadows.
+
+"All round about me," he whispered, "all about me those hands are
+pulling, and yet--and--and----"
+
+He laughed until his face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall,
+grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one
+clenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud,
+useless, against the chair.
+
+"I thought I was afraid--I--I thought I saw--I saw death behind--but
+I--I shall not die until--until I have written--written--what is it I
+am to write--ah! yes!"
+
+Searching sideways with his left hand he groped and found the pen, then
+very carefully, very slowly turned towards the desk.
+
+He drove the pen in fiercely, making a thick black mark; he pushed it
+until the nib stuck, spluttered, and broke as he flung out both hands
+as if grasping at something which evaded him.
+
+"Gone!" he mouthed, though there was no sound of speech in the room.
+"Gone--gone!" and he suddenly tore at his collar and his cuffs as
+though to break some bond which held him, as he glanced furtively about
+the room.
+
+For one long moment he sat leaning forward, staring far beyond the
+Indian screen upon which his eyes were fixed, and then slowly, almost
+imperceptibly, his head moved.
+
+The drawn white face had the hunted look of some animal at bay, the
+agonised eyes moved as the head moved; slowly, slowly, inch by inch,
+the breath coming stertorously as the mouth tried vainly to frame some
+word.
+
+The moon had gathered the last fold of her silvery raiment about her
+and was creeping away through the open window just as Sir Jonathan
+looked straight up into the eye gleaming malevolently through the gloom.
+
+And as he looked the head moved gently so that the eye leered cunningly
+into the distorted face beneath; it, hovered for a fraction of time on
+the edge of the shelf and fell, just as the old man, with a blinding
+flash of understanding sweeping his face, sprang to his feet, stood
+upright, swayed forward, and fell back sideways, dead, across his
+chair, staring across the room into eternity with eyes full of
+knowledge and infinite horror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  "How have I hated instruction, and my heart
+  despised reproof!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"Oh! dear!"
+
+The plaintive ejaculation fell on the drowsy noonday air, and the
+speaker fished a chocolate out of the box, offered her in heartfelt
+sympathy by her companion.
+
+"Buck up, old thing!" said the latter.  "These very same old exam rods
+were laid up in pickle for our forbears, and they survived the ordeal.
+The summer's here and the holidays are due, so let's grin and bear it,
+and what _does_ it matter if you _do_ mix your futures and
+conditionals?  As long as it's French and you don't split your
+infinitives you're all right, the splitting, I believe, _is_ a mortal
+sin in some cases, though I don't quite understand how, or exactly what
+it means."
+
+Seaview House is an establishment for the finishing of young ladies,
+which process includes the rounding of their anatomical angles by means
+of dancing and physical culture, and the polishing of the facets of
+their intelligence by the gentle manipulation of three or four foreign
+governesses and professors of music, singing, drawing, etc.  These
+latter smile suavely through the excruciating half-hours they allot to
+each unfinished damsel, and tear their hair in private at the memory of
+the daily and hourly murderous executions of the old masters at which
+they must perforce assist.
+
+And as much, and even more, attention is paid to the repousse work on
+the outside of the platter.
+
+The hirsute covering is brushed and burnished until the heads of the
+two score damsels bob about in the sun like globes of ebony, or straw,
+or Dutch cheese, or ginger; finger nails shine like old cut glass, just
+enough and not too much; figures are repressed or augmented until they
+look more like figures and less like sacks of barley, or wood planks.
+They are taught to sit down and stand up, and to cross, enter or leave
+a room like humans instead of colts, to pitch the voice in a low and
+gracious key, and to look upon slang as a luxury only to be enjoyed in
+the absence of those in temporary power.  In fact the establishment is
+quite old-fashioned but infinitely charming, and has the reputation of
+having more old pupils to a score of years happily or advantageously
+married, and fewer ditto employed in a useful capacity than any other
+school in Eastbourne.
+
+Which is all as it should be!
+
+"Yes! but," continued, let's call her Annie Smith; she does not appear
+in the book again so that it really does not matter about her
+nomenclature.  "I could just see Leonie from my desk and she was
+smiling all over her face and romping, simply _romping_ through the
+French papers."
+
+"Oh! but," sympathised, let us call her Susan Brown for the same reason
+that we christened Annie Smith, "_she_ has a brain!"
+
+Nice Susan Brown hadn't, but balanced the lack by a wealthy parentage.
+
+"Yes! of course she has!  And _isn't_ she beautiful!"
+
+Nice Annie Smith was as plain as a bun, but balanced her defect by a
+heart of gold, and found her ultimate and perfect joy in an overworked
+curate and seven children by him, all of whom were destined to sit
+round the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on a
+plate.
+
+"Yes! isn't she!  She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very different
+to all of us."
+
+"I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary," rather
+importantly added Susan Brown, "_bizarre_----"
+
+"Whatever does it mean?" inquired Annie Smith, who was destined never
+again to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of her
+neutral life.
+
+"Er--a kind of a--er--_je ne sais quoi_ in the temperament--not exactly
+a nonconformist, you know; but just a little--well, not _quite_ like
+_us_!"
+
+"I see!" contentedly replied mystified Annie Smith.  "But I _do_ love
+her; she's such a dear.  So gentle and so ready to help everybody, and
+so _splendid_ at sports.  What tremendous friends she and Jessica have
+become, haven't they, since the night of the scare?  I often wonder
+what made her walk in her sleep like that; she's never done it since."
+
+"Indigestion, I've always thought.  Cookie was away on her holidays, if
+you remember, and her _locum tenens_, understudy, you know, made pastry
+like cement; I always thought, too, that Principal gave her that lovely
+little room right away from the rest of us on account of it--the
+sleep-walking, I mean.  I'm sure I should have _died_ if I'd found her
+standing over me in the moonlight in the middle of the night.  It must
+be awfully jolly though having someone in India who writes to you every
+three months.  _Isn't_ she lucky to have been _born_ in India, and to
+have had an ayah, a kind of native nurse, you know, who _still_
+worships her, and writes to her, and sends _real_ Indian presents, and
+to have had a V.C. for a father--Leonie, I mean?"
+
+Annie Smith laughed that happy laugh which is the outcome of a
+perfectly contented mind.  "She deserves all the luck she gets, and
+what luck for _us_ having her as head next term.  What a favourite she
+is with everyone, even old Signer Valenti!  Oh, dear, I wish
+to-morrow's exams were over; my fingers feel just like blanc-mange when
+I think of that nocturne."
+
+"Never say die, Ann!  _Have_ you heard Leonie play the Moonlight?"
+
+"No!  What's it like?"
+
+"Simply _awful_, just like Mam'zel when she thumps downstairs in her
+felt slippers."
+
+There fell a space of drowsy silence in which the girls lay back on the
+grass incline, and solemnly munched chocolates with youth's delightful
+dissociation from anything more perplexing than the passing of the
+actual hour.
+
+"No!" murmured Annie Smith, breaking the drowsy spell.  "She's _not_
+like us--couldn't be with a V.C. father and India as a birthright.  But
+isn't it all _wonderfully_ mysterious?"
+
+Dear unsophisticated soul, whose _wanderlust_ was yearly arrested, or
+rather satisfied, with the summer holiday by the sea, and whose rector
+father acted as a weekly soporific to his congregation.
+
+"I wonder who gave her that perfectly _horrible_ charm?" she added
+sleepily.
+
+"The ayah, I _think_," came an equally sleepy answer.  "Did I tell you
+that I found it in the bath-room the other night?  It's an eye--a
+cat's-eye, you know--a perfect beast of a thing; I would swear it
+winked at me when I dropped it on the floor.  Anyway I left it there
+and simply _flew_ out of the room to tell Leonie, and Jessica pinched,
+I beg Principal's pardon, took my bath.  Ugh!  and she wears it night
+and day--oh! look, here she comes----"
+
+"Oh!" sighed plain Annie Smith, "isn't she _beautiful_!"
+
+She was!
+
+Unaware that anyone was watching, Leonie stopped in front of a bush of
+red roses.  She neither touched or sniffed them; she just flung out her
+arms, lifted her face to the blazing sun and laughed.
+
+The simple school frock showed the wonder of her figure, with the
+beautiful rounded bust, the slender waist, and the moulded limbs; the
+sun drew red and yellow lights out of the heavy russet hair, gold
+flecks out of the green eyes, and a flash of crimson from the rather
+full clear-cut mouth with its turned-up corners.
+
+Her skin was like ivory with the faintest tinge of pink just on the
+very tip of the rather pronounced cheek-bones; her hands were small and
+fine, and the fingers were like pea-pods, long and slender and slightly
+dimpled.
+
+And when she moved away towards the summer-house where she could see
+the sea, she moved not at all from her waist upwards.  She held her
+head and shoulders as though she had carried baskets of fruit or
+washing upon the crown of her pate since her youth; her glorious bosom
+was like a bed of lotus buds in the southern wind; she moved like a
+deer, or a snake, or a bacchanalian dancer, as you will; but in any
+case in a way which in the present tense caused the Principal to mourn
+in secret, and in the future brought the condemnation of women and the
+eyes of men full upon her.
+
+And behind the summer-house she leant against the wall.
+
+"One more term," she said, "only one more term, and then I shall be
+free--free to go--free to wander--free to follow the voice which is
+calling, calling!  Only one more little term!"
+
+And Fate, grinning, pinched that one more little term between her
+knotted old thumb and finger so that it was stillborn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  "And hath gone and served other gods."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Shriek upon shriek tore the peaceful stillness of the night, and in one
+second the sleeping house was transformed from a place of rest and
+quiet to the semblance of a disturbed rookery.
+
+Deathly silence followed the horrible screams of fear and the sound of
+the girls calling one to the other, during which mistresses extricated
+themselves from the encumbering bedclothes to rush on to their
+respective landings; elder girls peered in terror from their bedroom
+doors, and younger ones clung to each other or the bed-post, or the
+door-knob, anything in fact which would help to support their quaking
+little knees.
+
+Once again the terrible screams rent the air, whipping everyone out of
+the stunned apathy which great fear brings to some folk, just as the
+Principal came out on to her landing and looked up to the second storey.
+
+"Miss Primstinn," she called, and her voice showed no sign of the
+thudding of her heart.
+
+Pushed by one of those willing hands always so eager to thrust someone
+else to the forefront of the battle, Miss Primstinn, clutching her
+courage and a drab dressing-gown in both hands, half ran, half slipped
+down the stairs.
+
+"_We_ will investigate, Miss Primstinn, and the young ladies will
+retire to their rooms and shut the doors."
+
+In days long past the house had been well built after the excellent
+design of a wealthy old architect who had fled the place when
+Eastbourne had become a centre for girls' schools and summer trippers.
+
+The full moon flooded the hall round which ran the galleries belonging
+to the successive storeys, each crowded with girls in various designs
+of night attire who hung over the oak balustrades to watch developments.
+
+But they all leapt in unison, as though spurred into action by an
+electric shock, when a deep voice boomed from the shadows round a green
+baize door in the hall which led to the servants' quarters.
+
+Then a distinct sigh of relief whistled softly through the entire house
+when the electric lights suddenly blazed and the speaker was discovered
+to be cook.
+
+Cookie in an emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat _declasse_
+bedjacket, a tight knot of hair playing bob-cherry with her kindly
+right blue eye, and a rolling-pin clutched truculently in her red right
+hand.
+
+Dear old Cookie who scolded and complained unceasingly, but who loved
+the entire school with a love which took the substantial form of
+delicious cakes, and buns, and jellies.
+
+"H'I've come to h'investigate, Mum!" she called up.  "Berglers or worse
+got into Miss Jessica's room through them dratted French windies, I'll
+be bound.  Now just you stay where you are, Mum, an' I'll go an' see,
+an' if I screams then come along.  And I think a policeman might come
+in handy, there may be one on the beat."
+
+She waddled away to another green door always left open o' nights, and
+which led to the wing reserved entirely for the girls of the Upper
+Sixth; and where each one revelled in her own dainty separate bedroom.
+
+"The young ladies will retire to their bedrooms and close their doors.
+Mademoiselle, I depend upon you!"  With one hand on the banisters and
+one foot poised for descent, the Principal pitted her will against
+overwhelming curiosity and won.
+
+Backing like a flock of sheep before the sheep-dog, they slowly retired
+and shut the doors, only to fling them wide open and rush to the
+balustrade in time to see the Principal, followed by Miss Primstinn,
+hurrying down the stairs to meet Cookie, who had run back into the hall
+shouting at the top of her voice.
+
+"Come along, Mum!  Quick!  Miss Jessica's dead and Miss Gertrude dying.
+And where's Miss Lee-onny--fetch her someone--it's 'er friend, little
+Miss Jessica, wots--wots----"
+
+The Principal, whose face looked suddenly livid and old, laid a hand on
+Cookie's shoulder.
+
+"Run and fetch the doctor, Cook, please, it will be quicker than the
+telephone!  I can trust you to keep your head.  Dr. Mumford is too far
+away, fetch the new one at the end of the road."
+
+"Please to send Brown, Mum, she's younger an' quicker at runnin' than
+me.  An' I think I can 'elp you, Mum," said Cookie quietly,
+unconsciously responding to the strength of her mistress's character.
+"An' I'd like to fetch Miss Lee-onny, Mum, she's that to be depended
+h'on an' clear'eaded."
+
+The Principal sighed under the sudden inrush of relief which had come
+to her at the mention of her favourite pupil.
+
+She loved Leonie with a love quite separate from her affection for all
+the young souls in her charge, and secretly admired the strength of
+will which more than once had been pitted against her own; moreover,
+accustomed to the quiet monotonous passage of time, she suddenly
+realised that she needed someone young and energetic in this emergency.
+
+And the girl she needed in her distress was kneeling on her bed with
+arms upraised above her head.
+
+The dying moon was slowly withdrawing her waning silvery light from the
+billowing mass of tawny hair, tumbling in lavender-scented masses
+around the girl; lingering for a moment on the eyes staring from under
+the unblinking eyelids, and for a second upon the glint of even teeth
+showing through the lips moving in prayer.
+
+And then she spoke, in the eerie tones of those who talk in their
+sleep; and the words were even those of India's most holy writ,
+sonorous and full of a surpassing dignity, rising and falling as she
+knelt motionless, her eyelids slowly closing upon the terrible staring
+eyes.
+
+"The sacrifice . . ." she chanted monotonously, "with voice, hearing,
+mind, I make oblation.  To this sacrifice . . . let the gods come well
+willing!"
+
+And as the moon sank to rest there was no sound save for a little sigh
+as Leonie, with closed eyes and white hands clasped upon her breast,
+stretched herself upon the bed, then with a violent movement sat up,
+and wide awake stared about the room.
+
+"Yes?" she whispered.  "Yes?"
+
+And her strange eyes, with pin-point pupils in a yellow green circle,
+seemed to follow something which crept slowly round the bare walls as
+far as the chintz window-curtain moving softly in the breeze of the
+coming dawn.  The room was full of shadows thrown by a creeper
+festooned outside the wide-open window; soft whisperings brought from
+the distant corners of the earth by the restless ocean filled the air,
+as she hastily twisted her hair into two great plaits with steady hands.
+
+Then she slipped quietly to the edge of the bed and searched with her
+bare feet for the crimson slippers; searched fearfully as though afraid
+of what they might touch whilst her eyes glanced this way and that
+through the shadowed room.
+
+"Who is calling me?" she whispered.  "Who wants me?"
+
+But there was no sound save for the whispering of the distant sea.
+
+She bent her head sideways as though to listen, rose to her feet, and
+standing back against the bed, looked down at the shadows which danced
+about the hem of her garment.  A swift furtive glance over her shoulder
+and her hand stole to the crimson kimono hanging on the brass rail,
+whilst a jewelled cat's-eye winked cunningly among the embroidery of
+her night-robe.
+
+"Come in," she said suddenly and sharply, "don't stand outside the
+door, come in."
+
+And when there came no answer she thrust her arms swiftly into the
+sleeves of the crimson kimono, and running across the room flung open
+the door, and finding the corridor empty passed hurriedly on, leaving
+the door wide so that the shadows skipped freakishly about the room in
+tune to the rhythmical whisperings which the sea bore from the distant
+corners of the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+  "Thy brother Death came, and cried,
+    'Wouldst thou me?'
+  And I replied,
+    'No, not thee!'"--_Shelley_.
+
+
+The electric lights gave out a kind of fictitious radiance against the
+dull grey of the hall windows through which the dawn was struggling.
+
+The place was packed with girls.  Some clustered near the baize door,
+standing nervously on tip-toe and with the intent of retiring
+precipitately if there should be any sign of the Principal; others hung
+over the stair or gallery banisters; the domestic staff stood round their
+own particular door, their white faces shining dully like Chinese
+lanterns; no one spoke or moved.  In fact they might have been posing for
+a photographer until those above suddenly swayed and bent this way and
+that, and those in the hall parted to give way to Leonie.
+
+Clad in crimson satin kimono, with feet thrust into crimson satin
+slippers and her hastily plaited hair hanging in two great ropes, she
+passed through them like a flame, emanating strength and resolve and a
+tremendous power of will.  Although she looked neither to the right nor
+left as she ran swiftly and disappeared into the wing where lay her
+little friend, there was something very pleasing in the way the girls put
+out their hands to touch her as she passed; and something distinctly
+encouraging in the whispered remarks that followed her, and which might
+be summarised in the "_Now_ it's all right," which under the high
+pressure of intense excitement almost burst from the lips of Annie Smith.
+
+Like an arrow she sped to the bed, unconsciously pushing aside the women
+who, almost frantic with fear and quite out of their bearings, were doing
+their best to grapple with the problem of life or death so suddenly
+placed before them.
+
+Kneeling, she turned the girl's livid little face towards her, vainly
+feeling for the pulse in the wrist and bruised neck; then sprang to her
+feet, faced the Principal and took the situation into her strong, capable
+young hands.
+
+"What happened?  And have you sent for the doctor?"
+
+Her usually sweet, clear voice was like the dull sound of a cracked
+earthenware pot when flipped by thumb and finger.
+
+"Yes, dear!" was the quick reply.  "The doctor will be here any
+moment--and hot bottles and blankets are being prepared.  Gertrude could
+not sleep and crept into Jessica's room to look for a German grammar for
+the examination to-morrow--to-day, and found Jessica in--in this--faint."
+
+And the elder woman suddenly laid a hand on the girl's arm and looked up
+at her with the confidence she always inspired.  "Help me, dear!" she
+whispered, with the dread of disgrace and an untimely ending to an
+honourable career in her old grey eyes.
+
+And Leonie smiled, answering with the superb confidence of youth, and a
+slight ray of hope pierced the suffocating fog of fear, and brought
+Cookie from the head of the bed where she had been standing in the shade
+of a screen.
+
+"Can I 'elp, Miss Lee-onny?"
+
+"Cookie, _dear_--you and Miss Primstinn, Miss Leanto and--yes, and
+Ellen--none of the girls--and quickly--there's not a moment to lose."
+
+"The doctor's coming, Mum," said a voice from the half-open door.
+
+"The doctor is coming, dear," repeated the Principal.
+
+Leonie answered with a strange authority in her words.
+
+"We will not wait for the doctor!"  She passed the tips of her fingers
+slowly across her forehead and down her cheek to the back of her neck, as
+was her habit when trying to solve some problem.  "No, we will not wait,
+because--because _I_ know!"
+
+Ten minutes later the door opened to let in a young man, who stood for a
+moment outlined against a sea of faces, and then turned and shut the door
+most decisively and locked it.
+
+"Who thought of that, I wonder," he said to himself, as he watched the
+four women kneeling round Jessica stretched out upon the floor.
+
+They were going through the movements used in resuscitating the drowned,
+and he, too, knelt at a nod by the side of the fat old woman in an
+emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat _declasse_ bedjacket, who
+was breathing heavily through the unaccustomed exercise.
+
+"Let us be--a bit, Sir!" she panted.  "She don't some'ow feel--quite--as
+dead--like!  Give us a--a chance.  One--two--three--four.  It's
+the--reg'lar--as does--it.  Miss Lee--onny's orders--Sir--bless er----"
+
+She jerked her head in the direction of Leonie, and the doctor looked.
+
+Behind her friend's head she knelt, her plaited hair twining like snakes
+to the ground, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, and the fingers
+of both hands pressing the temples of the child upon the floor, whilst to
+and fro, lifeless, dull, swung the great cat's-eye from a gold chain
+about the neck.
+
+"Good God!" muttered the young doctor who, having travelled the world as
+ship's surgeon, knew that the scalpel and soda-cum-gentian do not
+constitute the whole of the art of healing.
+
+As he looked a great bead of perspiration dropped from Leonie's forehead,
+between the taut arms, on to her knees; and a sudden shiver shook her
+from head to foot, and he heaved his overcoat into a chair, and edged
+very quietly until he knelt between her and Cookie.
+
+"It's 'orrible, Sir!" the latter whispered, as she glanced at the pupil
+she loved most.
+
+And it was.
+
+By now the perspiration was pouring in streams from the girl's face,
+whilst the slim body shook and shook like a young tree in a storm; her
+teeth chattered like castanets, her closed eyes were sunk in purple black
+orbits, the cheeks were drawn and grey, and the nostrils were dilating
+like those of a far-spent horse.
+
+"For Gawd's sake stop 'er.  Sir--she's a-killing of 'erself."
+
+The doctor shook his head, took out a brandy flask and a metal box from a
+leather case beside him on the floor.  He held up the ready-filled glass
+syringe to the light and sent a squirt of what looked like water through
+the gleaming needle.
+
+"If the young lady shows signs of life I want you to get this brandy down
+her throat _at once_, and begin to massage her heart."
+
+"Massige! that's same as kneading dough, ain't it, Sir!"
+
+"That's it!  Miss--Miss--oh! Leonie will want the most attention, she is
+only just alive.  I will give her another two minutes, and if nothing has
+happened by then I'll stop her, though it'll be an awful risk!"
+
+"What's she a-doin' of, Sir?"
+
+"She's forcing her own life, her vitality into her friend; she's
+practically raising the dead!"
+
+"_Lor_, Sir!"
+
+He had just raised his hand to touch Leonie, praying to heaven for the
+girl's reason, when she suddenly flung back her head.
+
+Up through the house-top, to the stars, the heavens, rushed the terrible
+cry, wailing as wails the wolf who has lost its mate, insisting as
+insists one who has staked his all on one final throw, imploring as
+implores the mother in the last dire throes of childbirth.
+
+What the language was, what the words meant, to whom the prayer was
+addressed, no one knew.
+
+But at the third terrible appeal to God, or Fate, or Death, or Life, and
+even as those who listened outside and those who ceased their labours in
+the room stuffed their ears with their fingers and sobbed, little Jessica
+opened her eyes, and smiled just as Leonie, flinging up her arms, crashed
+face downwards on the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+  "The fix'd events of Fate's remote decrees."--_Pope_.
+
+
+Vultures drowsed in the shade thrown by the crumbling, sun-cracked,
+heat-stricken mud walls and houses which lined the meandering unpaved
+streets, or rather passages, of a certain village in northern India;
+crows were packed everywhere, taking no notice for the nonce of the
+feast of filth and garbage spread invitingly around them, and in which
+sprawled the disgusting, distorted bodies of somnolent water buffaloes;
+inside the houses hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids slept
+through the terrific heat of the noonday hours; in the distance the
+Himalayas, supreme and distressing, like a ridge across eternity, lay
+behind the turrets and minarets of the town which, thanks to the Indian
+atmosphere and the long distance, shone white, fretted, and--well,
+exactly as you can see it any day in paint at the Academy or in Bond
+Street.
+
+Perfectly motionless upon the high khaki-coloured wall, which entirely
+surrounds the village, with dust upon his aged feet and raiment and
+once white turban, oblivious of the heat, the flies, and everything
+that slept, sat a man with age written upon every gnarled joint, and in
+every crack and fissure of the parchment-like skin.
+
+_So_ old, and _yet_ with life, and hope, and youth eternal in the dark
+hawk eye which gazed unseeingly through the outer world straight
+towards the mountains.
+
+And the old body made no sign of life, even when the vultures without
+sound soared majestically heavenwards, whilst the crows rose in
+shrieking disordered squads, and a kite whistling melodiously swooped
+from nowhere downwards across his head to the filth of the streets.
+
+Neither did he turn his head or his eyes when a coal-black stallion,
+guided only by the pressure of its rider's knees, came to a stand
+directly beneath him in the shadow of the wall, having scrambled and
+slithered, jumping like a deer, climbing like a goat down the
+rock-strewn road which leads to the village from the great house at its
+rear; one of those abominable roads allotted to the calloused native
+foot, honoured for the first time in this instance by the passage of
+the prince's son and heir.
+
+An arresting picture the rider and his horse made as the man bent low
+in the saddle and salaamed, then raised his turbaned head and sat
+motionless, gazing at the holy man.
+
+Minutes passed before, with arms filled with offerings and garlands of
+marigolds and jasmin swinging from his wrists, he slid from the saddle
+to the ground, and took his way up the narrow tortuous path which Fate
+had marked out for him through all time.
+
+High caste, high born, as slender and delicate and as pressed with life
+as a budding branch in spring, Madhu Krishnaghar stood beside the
+priest in the incongruous setting of the mud walls.
+
+A coat of fine white linen with broad orange waistband came to just
+below the knees; white trousers fastened tight about the ankle fitted
+almost like a stocking from ankle to knee; the slender, narrow feet
+were shod in native slippers, the white turban with its regulation
+folds outlined the pale bronze face with the sign of the man's religion
+traced between the eyebrows; diamond solitaires sparkled in the ears,
+and one necklace of great pearls hung about his neck.
+
+"Usual large gentle eye, hawk nose, mobile mouth and small-boned oval
+face" would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of any
+occidental passer-by; "meet 'em everywhere, gambling at the street
+corner, or squatting in the bazaar, or riding elephants."
+
+Yes! but--is not India's future history writ large upon that
+small-boned oval face for those who, having the vision, read as they
+walk warily.
+
+For those who run hastily past life's signposts cannot and will not see
+that, like the fresh green grass which hides the dug pit, those gentle
+luminous eyes draw attention from the subtle cruelty of the mouth,
+through which gleam the pitiless perfect teeth.
+
+Glorying in his bull-neck and massive chin, and blinded by his insular,
+inherited upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the
+thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of
+the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through worship at the
+shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of
+movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root
+from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with
+its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind,
+causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled
+lips, and the young to envisage plague, pestilence, and famine with a
+mere lifting of the shoulder.  Patience! the card which India does not
+hold up her sleeve in the game of life she is playing; the
+dull-coloured drab little bit of cardboard which she throws on the
+table openly, but which we ignore amongst the highly coloured,
+bejewelled pictures she places before us, smiling with the tender
+luminous eyes so that we shall forget the subtle cruelty of the mouth.
+
+Placing his offerings at the holy man's feet, and laying the garlands
+gently about the bowed shoulders, Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of
+princes, stooped and lifting the hem of the dust-covered garment, laid
+it against his forehead, then quietly sat down a pace removed from the
+ancient who took no notice whatever of his proceedings.
+
+And time passed, linking one hour of noon to its neighbour and the
+next, until the hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids awoke to the
+freshness of the evening and the monotony of its tasks.
+
+Kites called, crows screamed, men gambled in the shadows of the evening
+and the upstanding, distorted, disgusting water buffalo; while the two
+men, master and pupil in the religion of death, sat hour after hour
+without movement, staring at the mountains, the dwelling-place of Siva
+the terrible, and the birthplace of Kali his bride.
+
+Far into the night they sat, until the last quarter of the moon had
+sunk to rest, when, with one single movement, the old man sprang to his
+feet, flung out his arms, and bent in utter humility and cast dust upon
+his once white turban.
+
+His voice was but a shrill cracked whisper when he called upon his god
+from the crumbling top of the sunbaked, moon-drenched wall, and
+turning, lifted his travel-stained mantle and laid it on the young
+shoulders beside him.
+
+An hour had passed, and more, before the holy man's tale, which ran
+back through the past seventeen years, was finished.  And when it had
+been told the high caste youth trembled in the ecstasy of his religion,
+amazed at the enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life,
+uplifted at the task before him.  Yea! he trembled in the ecstasy of
+his religion, forgetting that love and passion and life ran just as
+riotously in his supple perfect body.
+
+He leapt to his feet, smiting his forehead with clenched hand.
+
+"Give me a sign, O Kali!  Show me that thou art pleased!"
+
+And he rent his garments in joy, showing the bronze breast with the
+blood-red marks of his terrible religion traced upon it; then thrusting
+his fingers in his ears sank to the ground and buried his head between
+his knees.
+
+A black kid, the happiest of all good omens, bleating with hunger,
+tripped and stumbled from a courtyard; yet even as it found its mother
+and buried its little head in the warmth of the soft side, there had
+come across the plains a weird, long-drawn-out sound, fraught with
+disaster to those who believe in signs.
+
+Long and shrill it sounded and ceased; and once again--to be lost in
+peals of indecent, discordant laughter.
+
+Uncontrolled, uncontrollable, loathesome sound which tears India's
+nights to shreds.
+
+The jackals had found at dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+  "A continual dripping in a very rainy day
+  and a contentious woman are alike."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+In the late spring Leonie stood at a cottage window watching the rush
+of the incoming water as she listened to her aunt's ceaseless lament,
+idly wondering if both would reach high tide together, and if there
+would be any chance of slipping out for a swim before bedtime.
+
+She loved her aunt with the protective love of the very strong for the
+very weak, and smilingly found excuses for the daily tirade against
+fate, or ill-luck, or whatever it is weak people blame for the hopeless
+knots they tie in their own particular bit of string by their haphazard
+bursts of energy, or apathetic resignation to every little
+stumbling-block they find in their path.
+
+Daily, almost hourly, through the splendid North Devon winter the aunt
+had wailed, and bemoaned, and fretted, driving the girl out on the
+tramp for hours in the wind, and the wet, and the sun, only to return
+hurriedly at the thought of the weak, hapless, helpless woman in the
+cottage at Lee.
+
+Susan Hetth complained about everything, from the lack of society to
+the smallness of her income, plus a few scathing comments upon her
+niece's weather-browned face and the hopeless outlook for her
+matrimonial future.
+
+Her own bid in the matrimonial market _en secondes noces_ had failed,
+and though Hope had not taken it lying down, the passage of the years
+had not been lightened by what seemed to be a daily addition of silver
+threads to the jaded ash gold of her hair, and the necessity of a still
+more flagrant distribution upon her face of the substances she employed
+to camouflage the passage of old Time.
+
+Ah, me! that moment before the stimulating advent of the early cup of
+tea, when divested of our motley we see ourselves in the mirror as,
+thanks be, others do not, and laying eager hands upon that offspring of
+charity, the boudoir cap, wonder if it has been in hobnailed boots that
+the old Father has tramped across our face during the night hours,
+dragging his scythe behind him.
+
+Leonie's school-days had ended abruptly.
+
+Nothing definite had or could have been said, but it was not likely
+that the parents would see exactly eye to eye with their daughters, who
+wrote reams and whispered volumes of the delightful mystery which
+surrounded the girl who next term would be head of the school.
+
+Long and excited had been the conclaves with the Principal, persuasive
+or threatening the arguments used, according to the parental
+temperament, and the upshot of it all was that Leonie had been asked to
+go; and proud, hurt Leonie had left, with a valiant smile on her lovely
+mouth, and a strange little questioning look that had only quite lately
+crept into the beautiful eyes, and which neither the outpourings of
+Jessica's love, a demonstration of affection from the entire school in
+the shape of numerous and weird presents, or the broken-hearted kiss of
+both the Principal and Cookie had been able to eradicate.
+
+The girl felt that she had left under a cloud, which a slight attack of
+what the doctor had diagnosed as brain fever had not served to line
+with silver.
+
+He had insisted upon complete change and rest, and had called twice a
+day when Leonie was really ill, and four times when she was
+convalescent; so upon fair Devon had they decided, Leonie cajoling and
+smiling until she had obtained a year's lease, at an absurdly low rent,
+of the little cottage on the left of Lee harbour as you face the sea.
+
+It is a place of charm if you are willing to do most of the work
+yourself with the aid of a daily help.
+
+It is certainly rather like a band-box with the lid on, and the ocean
+at high tide is only prevented by the harbour wall from invading your
+front garden, which is the size of a handkerchief.
+
+But if you sit at the window you can feel the spray on your face, and
+if you lie a-bed the tang of the air sweeping across the Atlantic will
+get you out at the double; and the smell of the pines, and the hum of
+the bees in summer, and the rush of the storm, and the crash of the
+waves in winter, are of God's own fashioning.
+
+What with shopping expeditions to that crime in brick and mortar called
+Ilfracombe, visits here and visits there, croquet, bridge, and picnics,
+the summer and early autumn months had not dragged unduly for Susan
+Hetth.
+
+But when the last visitor had gone, and the first real storm had broken
+a window, then she had sunk like a lump of lead in a bucket of cold
+water out of which she refused to be lifted.
+
+Leonie was youth incarnate, causing even the courteous folk of Devon to
+turn and stare as she swung past with a cheery greeting in a skirt and
+hob-nailed boots ending at her knees.
+
+For the first month, as one always does in Devon, she had walked
+herself to the verge of scragginess, then had gradually put on weight,
+as is the correct method.  Her whistle could be heard in the woods and
+fields, and on the beach from Lee to Hartland way; all the country folk
+loved her, and scolded her for the risks she took in swimming, and she
+seemingly had no care in the world.
+
+But the great heat of summer, the shriek of the wind, and the scream of
+the birds in autumn would bring a little pucker between her brows; the
+storm would drive her spirits up to breaking point, the calm would
+leave her eyes full of trouble; in the woods she would stop and turn to
+listen, then frown and trudge along between the trees.
+
+She was not at rest, for an unconfessed fear, a spook without name or
+shape, was plucking at her will-power and her heart, a phantom of which
+she would rather have died than have said one word.
+
+So she stood twisting the blind cord and watching the rocks as they
+gradually disappeared under the swirling waters.
+
+Susan Hetth sat near the fire, which is oft-times necessary in the
+spring at Lee, and tapped in irritation, and most irritatingly, with
+her foot against the low fender.
+
+She was worried.
+
+She was not by birth or heredity a bad-tempered woman, merely one of
+straw, who after the first two months of every quarter invariably found
+herself in a corner which one injudicious move might render
+uncomfortably tight.
+
+Her financial situation, in fact, had become so critical, and the bank
+manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more
+than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of
+the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the
+Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to
+harbour paying guests in the no-man's-land of Earls Court.
+
+Then Fate crossed her knees, and out of her lap had tumbled a widower
+possessed of a substantial banking account and four children.
+
+A few more days, a little more encouragement, and he would most
+certainly have offered her his name and the half of his worldly goods
+in return for her help in quelling the riotous behaviour of his
+motherless brood.
+
+But there had supervened the crisis at school.
+
+And grasping for once in her life the necessity of immediate action if
+she wished to prevent an embellished account of her niece's untoward
+behaviour from reaching the man's ears, she had fled to Devon, leaving
+behind a trail of dainty scented notes explaining that it was all on
+account of a slight nervous breakdown from overstudy on the part of her
+niece "who," she added casually, "as I think I told you, is the only
+daughter of my dear brother, Colonel Hetth, V.C."
+
+Snobbish, but quite effective as bait for a person who has not complete
+control over the eighth letter of the alphabet.
+
+That very morning, quite unheedful of the beauties of the little witch
+village, she had gone to collect her mail lying at the post office,
+which in summer is almost hidden in its garden of flowers; and amongst
+an assortment of spring sale catalogues from emporiums, mostly situated
+in South Kensington, had found a letter from the widower, begging to be
+allowed to come down for a change of air, and an opportunity of laying
+a proposition before her.
+
+She had wandered up the side of the hill, unmindful of the birds and
+buds almost bursting with the intoxication of spring; had pitched the
+catalogues anywhere on the grass, as is the wont of the untidy who have
+no bond with nature, and had tried to solve the problem as she scraped
+the mud, with the aid of a twig, from her Louis-Quinze heels.
+
+But she was harassed, poor, hapless creature, for more than one reason.
+
+The words of alarm from the nurse, the innuendoes from departing
+maid-servants, and the direct warning from the old specialist which had
+long since faded from her mind, had been forcibly revived by the
+happenings at the school; and being one of those who invariably plump
+for the worst, and without giving the slightest thought to the
+criminality of the proceeding, she had definitely decided, if she could
+coerce the girl into falling in with her plans, to marry her to the
+highest bidder before worse could happen.
+
+But she was downright afraid of her niece.  Afraid of her moral
+strength which dominated everything and everybody; ill at ease with the
+straightforward way she had of speaking her mind on occasions, and
+following up her speech with action.  Never an untruth had she known to
+pass the girl's lips, not once had she heard her say one belittling
+thing about a living soul, and only twice had she seen the sweetness
+and gentleness swept with anger.
+
+Cruelty to anything small or weak could transform the girl into a flame
+of wrath, and her weakest spot was her overpowering sympathy with
+anyone in distress, without any inquiries into the direct cause of the
+adversity, which spot caused her to be considerably taken in by many of
+those who had discerned it.
+
+An almost abnormal moral strength, allied to great gentleness and pity,
+combined to make a character extraordinary in one so young, and which
+her aunt summed up and summarily dismissed from her mind in the trite
+sentence that "she certainly did not take after her parents."
+
+She was considered slow by the youths, and perplexing and therefore to
+be avoided by the girls of her own age, and dull or frightfully
+conceited by the men who had fluttered round her almost exotic beauty
+until they had come up against the icy barrier of her supreme
+indifference.
+
+To those who knew her intimately, such as the fisherfolk and the
+farmers, and the tramps with whom she would sit and converse by the
+wayside and share her lunch, she was the most lovable, cheery soul in
+the world, which, of course, meant the county of Devon.
+
+"Damn standoffish, what!"
+
+Such had been the verdict passed by someone married who hailed from
+London town, when Leonie had refused to sit out a dance in a secluded
+shady nook.
+
+"Just a bit of heaven!" had said the tramp as he turned the corner in
+the lane, leaving Leonie sitting on the milestone pondering upon the
+man whose ragged clothes were out of keeping with the shape of his
+nails, and the timbre of his voice with his unkempt hair.
+
+But leaving all that aside, and in all conscience it was bad enough,
+the biggest worry hung as heavy and as threatening upon the horizon as
+does at times the monsoon over the Indian Ocean.
+
+Once upon a time Susan Hetth had committed an indiscretion, nothing
+_really_ wrong--she hadn't the nerve.  But the nuisance of it was,
+that, in addition to the indiscretion, she had broken the eleventh
+commandment and had very nearly got hanged for her lamb.
+
+In the second year of her widowhood in the month of November, whilst
+her hair was still golden and her colouring unpurchased, she had dined
+_a deux_ in one of those delectable, ghost-ridden, low-ceilinged sets
+of chambers which are tucked away in a certain Inn within the Fleet
+Street boundary.
+
+Which is a silly thing to do if you do not own a car and a
+long-suffering discreet chauffeur.
+
+The _diner a deux_ and a bit of a play had been the honest programme;
+but the inevitable had happened in an all-enveloping blanket of a fog,
+on account of which everything in the shape of a hackney carriage had
+gone home, and an excursion on foot to the nearest tube rendered
+hopeless by the simple fact that you could not see your hand before
+your face.
+
+Which would not have mattered a bit if only, as the fog lifted and the
+clock of St Dunstan's chimed the hour of three a.m., she had emerged
+from the narrow opening into Fleet Street with the aplomb or
+_savoir-faire_, which are almost twins, necessary to the occasion.
+
+She would then have beckoned to and smiled sweetly upon the young
+ruffian into whom she bumped as he lounged on his way to Covent Garden
+Market, and promised him just enough to bring her a taxi or something
+on wheels, into which she would have got if it had materialised, and
+been whirled away to safety and bed after adieux to her host uttered
+with the nonchalance necessary to allay the young ruffian's suspicions.
+
+Instead of this she had slunk from the opening with her host close
+behind, had bumped into the young ruffian and with an exclamation of
+dismay had shrunk back into the shadows and her host's arms.
+
+In consequence of which action the bare-footed ruffian had shadowed
+them until they had met a four-wheeler, had held the lady's dress from
+the wheel and overheard the address given to the driver for which he
+had received tuppence, and had disappeared into a doorway where he had
+spat on his unearned increment and made his plans.
+
+The upshot of it all being the admittance a fortnight later of young
+Wal. Hickle, attired in his best and primed with her family history,
+into the presence of the terrified woman.
+
+He had simply asked for twenty pounds on the nail in return for his
+silence.
+
+And she, scared out of her wits, instead of threatening him with the
+law, had given him a cheque--yes! a cheque--and he, with a flash of
+that cunning which was to lead him eventually to a seat amongst the
+plutocrats, had pocketed it and grinned.
+
+"I doan' wan' mor' 'en twenty uv the best, lidy, jus' to mike a
+start--an' I doan' wanter part wiv yer 'and-writin' niver.  So jes' yer
+send two rustlers, wot means notes, of ten pun each, rigistered, to W.
+'ickle spelt wiv a haitch, 2 H'apple Blossom Row, Coving Gardin, afore
+this toime ter-morrer.  An' jes yer remember that h'as long as yer
+lives I've got yer bit of 'andwritin.'  I ain't goin' ter use it, but
+some dye it might come in 'andy.  'Ardly loikly as 'ow yer'd buy twenty
+pun wurf of veg from Wal 'ickle eh, lidy?--it 'ud want _some_
+h'explanation."
+
+Then this soul made in the image and likeness of his God and found
+good, but hidden under the civilising process of the twentieth century
+which had given him the morals of a jackal and the status of a pariah
+dog, sighed as he looked round the dainty room.
+
+"S'welp me," he said, as he touched a satin cushion with his coarse,
+broken-nailed finger-tips, "h'if oi h'understand wye a woman the loikes
+uv _you_, wiv h'everyfink she wants, cawn't run _strite_!"
+
+"Oh! but," whimpered the woman, "it was all the fault of the fog,
+_really_ it was!"
+
+"Garn!" replied the young ruffian as he opened the door and slammed it
+behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+  "Surely I am more brutish than any man!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+And just about midsummer Fate tweaked the string to which was hobbled
+Susan Hetth.
+
+A vulgar but resplendent bachelor middle-aged millionaire, sterling,
+not dollars, in order to set his gastronomic house in order, had taken
+a notion for the simple life for just as long as the notion should
+last, and a perfect bijou of a thatched cottage t'other side of
+Clovelly for a year.
+
+With a notion of buying the cottage at Lee in which had dwelt the three
+historic maids, he had swept one day through the village in the latest
+thing in cars.
+
+Baulked in his intent, and with time upon his podgy hands, he had
+rolled, minus the car, along the village path over the strippet of
+water and the sunbaked grass to the harbour.
+
+There he had bent, with ardour and misgivings, to pick up Leonie's
+towel, just as the soft wind caught her bathing cloak as she stretched
+out her hand with a smile of thanks.
+
+She had grabbed at the cloak and missed it by a bit, so that it had
+swept behind her, hanging from one shoulder like some Grecian drapery,
+and the rotund little man had trotted round her draped side, picked up
+the cloak by the big button, and completed his trot, covering her up as
+he moved.
+
+And as he trotted his little porcine eyes had glistened as they
+lingered upon the perfect figure, from the slim ankles to the confused
+face, and Leonie had blushed, though you could not have discerned it
+through the tan, pulled the cloak tighter and hurried across the road
+to the cottage gate.
+
+But with the clumsy swiftness of the elephantine, the man had run after
+her and opened the cottage gate just as Susan Hetth opened the cottage
+door with the welcoming announcement that tea was ready.
+
+"Ha!" he had snorted as he almost ran up the path, leaving Leonie to
+stand still and stare in amazement at the little scene.  "And I'll have
+some tea, too, Lady Susan Hetth, and how d'you do.  Long time since we
+met, eh?"
+
+Diamonds sparkled in the sun as the man stretched out an effusive hand,
+and a flame of anger sparkled in the small eyes as Lady Susan drew back
+frigidly.
+
+Not being of them herself she set all the greater store on knowing
+those she considered exactly the right people.
+
+"I don't think I have----" she commenced in her most primpsy voice,
+when she was interrupted with a perfectly odious familiarity.
+
+"Now you're not going to say that you don't remember our little
+meetings in Earls Court _and_ Fleet Street and"--the man spoke with an
+extreme slowness as though keeping guard over each letter of each
+word--"_and_ our little correspondence, come now."
+
+Leonie frowned and moved a step forward protectingly as her aunt caught
+suddenly at the door handle, and then jerked herself forward with
+outstretched hand.
+
+"Auntie, dear----"
+
+But her aunt was speaking in the falsetto of forced levity, and Leonie
+held her peace and waited for an opportunity to slip past and into the
+house.
+
+"Why, I do believe," said Susan Hetth, suddenly metamorphosed by a
+certain tone in the man's voice into the terrified woman of years ago,
+"Yes!  I do believe it is Mr. Walter Hickle----"
+
+"_Sir_ Walter, _if_ you please."
+
+"Indeed, in-deed--how _very_ delightful, and after _all_ these years!
+Leonie, this is--is--er----"
+
+"I'm one of your aunt's friends, Miss Leonie, bobbed up out of the
+past.  Glad to meet you, hope we shall be friends, too."
+
+Leonie, who had gained the door, looked back over her aunt's shoulder
+and spoke with a gentle courtesy very much her own.
+
+"I always like to meet Auntie's friends!"
+
+Not knowing the man from Adam she spoke no untruth, but in spite of
+reiterated calls to come down to tea she remained in her bedroom until
+the loud-voiced guest had taken his departure.
+
+While the two women were having yet another cup of tea Sir Walter
+Hickle, millionaire, tradesman, and knight, sat down gingerly upon a
+rock and made his plans.
+
+He had made his plans as a bull-necked, offensive youth the first day
+he had pulled out from Covent Garden with a barrow piled with walnuts
+bought out of two rustlers, value of ten pun each.
+
+"I'll _get there_!" he had informed the nuts as he tweaked his cap over
+one eye, and his red neckerchief into place; and had sworn a mighty and
+quite unprintable oath as he struck a huge fist into a horny palm at
+the corner of Ludgate Circus and New Bridge Street.
+
+"I'll _get there_!" he informed the seaweed as he lifted the soft grey
+hat from his bald head and adjusted the enormous pearl pin in the pale
+pink satin tie; and he sighed stertorously as he complacently patted
+his knee with a podgy hand, upon the manicured plebeian fingers of
+which shone two magnificent diamond rings.
+
+And if you cannot penetrate the strongholds of Devon county, it is not
+difficult to make acquaintance with her visitors, especially if your
+visiting card is a gilt edge security for future excursions and
+diversions done in top-hole style.
+
+Unsuspecting Leonie, who never kept a grudge, after a week or so of
+astonishment and aversion, thinking in her innocence of heart that she
+perceived the trend of events, made up her mind to meet the rotund old
+knight with the simple graciousness due to her aunt's would-be husband.
+
+True, the elasticity of her graciousness did not stretch enough to
+allow her to accept the never-ending invitations which poured into the
+cottage; but she would tuck her remonstrating aunt into the car which
+was ever at the gate, and smile delightfully upon the infatuated old
+fellow who put her aloofness down to mere girlish waywardness.
+
+Although the corporeal part of the old vulgarian grated on her
+susceptibilities, she was quite willing to believe that if one chose to
+dig deep enough it would prove to be only the rough earth covering a
+positive mine of rare temperamental gems; and in her blindness whistled
+cheerily as she thought of the joy her aunt would feel at not having to
+drop her title when she changed her name, and at being able to retain
+the same initials for her monogram.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+  "To sell a bargain well is as cunning
+  as fast and loose."--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+"Now I want you to listen to me, Leonie!"
+
+"I am, Auntie!"
+
+"I mean _seriously_!  I want to talk about myself for one thing, and
+our very straitened means, which do not permit us to go on living even
+like this; and oh! lots of other things."
+
+"Right, darling!" said her niece, moving across the room to sit on a
+broad stool at her relation's feet, but twisting her head to one side
+with a quick movement when her aunt laid her hand dramatically upon the
+tawny hair.
+
+"Please, Auntie, don't!  I can't bear to have my head touched!"
+
+"Just what I want to talk about!" vaguely said Susan Hetth as she tried
+to disentangle an old-fashioned ring which had unfortunately caught a
+few shining hairs in its loose setting.
+
+"Please don't touch my _head_, Auntie!" repeated Leonie as she sat
+back.  "Let my hair _go_, please!"
+
+"I'm not touching your hair, child," impatiently replied the elder
+woman.  "It's got caught in one of my rings!"
+
+Leonie's eyes were almost closed in a strange kind of psychological
+agony; then just as though she acted unconsciously she seized her
+aunt's hands and pulled them quickly from her head, tearing out the
+hair entangled in the ring by the roots.
+
+"I can't stand it, Auntie.  I have never been able to bear anyone
+touching my head," she said very quietly.
+
+"I think you're insane at times, Leonie, _really_ I do!"
+
+The terrible words were out, and for one long moment the two women
+stared into each other's eyes.
+
+"You think I am insane at times," whispered Leonie.  "_You_--Auntie,
+_you_ think I am _insane_!"
+
+And the elder woman, floundering in dismay at the awful effect of her
+unconsidered words, sank to her neck in a bog of explanation.
+
+"No!  Leonie--no, of course not--I wasn't thinking--of _course_ you're
+not mad--insane I mean.  What an idea! only I am worried about you, you
+know that, don't you, dear!  _Do_ be sensible, dear.  Of course your
+brain is not _quite_ normal.  It can't be with all that sleep-walking,
+can it, and all your abnormally brilliant exams!"
+
+Susan Hetth's disjointed remarks sounded like the clatter of a pair of
+runaway mules, while Leonie clasped her hands tight as she sat crouched
+on her stool.
+
+"Of course people _will_ talk, you know, dear!  They did when you were
+quite a baby and began walking in your sleep.  And they did, you know,
+at school after that unfortunate child nearly got strangled by her
+sheets--I always do think that school fare is _most_ indigestible--and
+_so_ likely to cause blemishes on the skin!"
+
+Leonie bowed her head.
+
+"Most unfortunate that you should have snubbed young
+Mr--what's-his-name--so severely--and that his sister should have been
+at school with you.  Out of revenge _she_ has been talking about you
+and your sleep-walking.  People are most unkind and _most_ unjust--and
+you are _far_ too pretty to receive any consideration from your _own_
+sex, how_ever_ much attention you may receive from the opposition--I
+mean sex--opposite sex, I mean----"
+
+Leonie sat absolutely still.
+
+"Anyway, my child, we need not worry--there is a way out of our little
+difficulties."
+
+Sensing that something was coming Leonie sat back with the light of the
+oil lamp full on her face as she stared at the clutter on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+"I _do_ so want you to do something for me, darling."
+
+The tone of Susan Hetth's voice and the touch of her hand on the girl's
+arm were as wheedling as if she were about to ask her to tramp into
+Ilfracombe on some trifling midnight errand.
+
+Leonie answered quite mechanically.
+
+"What is it, dear!" she said.  "Say the word and I'll do it!"
+
+"Is that a promise?"
+
+"Ra-ther!  Anything to please you, Auntiekins!"
+
+Susan Hetth took her fence in a rush!
+
+"I want you to get married," she said abruptly out of pure fright, and
+wrenched at her bead chain when Leonie leapt to her feet.
+
+The girl stood quite still, outlined in her simple low-cut,
+short-sleeved dress by the wall, her hands pressed back against it.
+
+There was no sound except the soft gurgle and murmur of the water until
+she spoke, quietly, but with a world of horror in her low-pitched voice.
+
+"You want me to marry--_you_--when a moment ago you said that you
+thought I was mad--you want me to marry some honest, unsuspecting man,
+and bear him children!"
+
+Susan Hetth, shocked to the limit of her Pecksniffian soul, made a
+nerveless fluttering gesture of protest with her hands.
+
+"Don't speak," said Leonie quickly, "please don't speak until I have
+done.  Marriage!  I will tell you what I have thought about it while I
+have been waiting for my mate."
+
+"Oh!" exploded Susan Hetth vehemently.  "_My dear_!  Surely you have
+not been corresponding with anyone!"
+
+Leonie hesitated.
+
+How was she to make her aunt, this shallow, unbalanced being,
+understand the joyous expectancy with which she had awaited the moment
+when she should meet the man born for her?
+
+How was she to take the exquisite longings, the veiled desires, the
+beautiful virgin thoughts, from her heart and lay them before this
+woman who had taught her nothing but the twenty-third Psalm without its
+real interpretation, plus the correct Sunday collect and daily prayers.
+
+How explain that to her the little golden ring would not represent a
+key opening the door to the so-called freedom from which fifty per cent
+of women descend, via the shallow flight of steps marked a good time,
+to the plain of discontent; or that to her the word love was
+sufficient, in that for her it included those of honour and obey,
+without any separate declaration in public.
+
+When she spoke she spoke hurriedly, flushing from chin to brow.
+
+"Auntie--I correspond with no man--but my--my mate is waiting for me
+somewhere--calling me all the time ever since--oh! ever since I can
+remember--and--and I should have married him when I had met him
+if--if----"
+
+In anger at this fresh complication, piled upon her appalling want of
+tact of a few moments ago, Susan Hetth struck her hands on the arms of
+her chair.
+
+"I think you absolutely _indecent_, Leonie, to go on like this about
+someone you have never even seen.  Now listen to me, and don't be so
+theatrical.  I have had an offer of marriage for you by someone who
+knows all about you, and who, after my assurance that there is nothing
+hereditary in your family on either side to account for the strangeness
+of your actions at times, is perfectly willing, even anxious, to marry
+you."
+
+"To take the risk, you mean," broke in Leonie.  "Oh!--well, go on."
+
+Aunt Susan, somewhat out of breath from the rapidity and unaccustomed
+lucidity of her words, inhaled deeply and continued.
+
+"He will make you an astounding marriage settlement, give you
+everything you want, and swears to make you per-fect-ly happy!"
+
+"And his name?"
+
+"Oh! don't be stupid, Leonie, of course you know whom I mean!"
+
+Leonie leant forward, stretching out her hands, her face dead white in
+the light of the lamp.
+
+"Tell me _his name_ and don't drive me beyond breaking point, Aunt
+Susan!"
+
+"Tosh!" contemptuously remarked her aunt.  "Don't be so childish--I
+mean Sir Walter Hickle, of course!"
+
+Expecting some violent words of protest the elder woman half rose from
+her chair, but appalled by the deathly silence and the look on the
+girl's face, sank back, cowering in her seat, and stared in the
+direction her niece's hand was pointing.
+
+"Look, Auntie, look!"
+
+Leonie stood with one hand pointing at the mantelpiece and the other
+pressed against her throat as she tried to speak coherently.
+
+The pupils of her eyes were pin-points as she gazed at a wooden frame
+which, adorned with edelweiss and the Lucerne Lion, held the snapshot
+of a complaisant individual leaning over the harbour wall, attired in a
+well-fitting but ill-placed yachting suit.
+
+"Old Pickled Walnuts!  You want me to marry him--when--when--oh! when I
+thought _he_ wanted to marry _you_!"
+
+She laughed, a laugh which sounded like the jangling of broken glass,
+and died almost before it was born; and her aunt, terrified at the
+sound and the expression on the girl's face, seized the outstretched
+arm and shook it violently.
+
+"What _are_ you talking about, Leonie!"
+
+Leonie freed her arm with a shudder.
+
+"Please don't touch me!"  Then making a desperate effort she continued
+quietly, so quietly indeed that Susan Hetth looked anxiously over her
+shoulder towards the door.
+
+"Don't you know that's his nickname?  Oh! of _course_ you do!  You
+_know_ he made his fortune by pickling walnuts too rotten to sell.  Sir
+Walter Hickle--twist the name a bit and it's all in a nutshell--a--a
+pickled walnut shell"--the little unnatural laugh broke across the
+words--"and you want _me_ to marry him--Auntie!  Auntie! he's awful
+enough, heaven knows, but not bad enough, nobody could be, to have a--a
+mad wife foisted on him--no! never--I'll go out and work!"
+
+There was something very decisive in the last words, but Susan Hetth,
+like most weak people, found her strength suddenly in a mulish
+obstinacy, which is a quite good equivalent for, and often more
+efficacious than mere strength of will.
+
+This obstinacy, backed by the knowledge that people were beginning to
+gossip about the girl's aloofness and love of solitude; that the
+cashing of another cheque would see her overdrawn at the bank; and that
+until the girl was settled and off her hands she would not be able to
+solve her own matrimonial problem, drove her to a show of mental energy
+of which she would not have been capable in an everyday argument.
+
+"Work!" she cried, "work!  What can you do?  _Nothing_--except go out
+as a companion or nursery governess!--and who would take you without a
+reference--and who would give _you_ one?  Tell me!"
+
+Leonie remained silent--stunned.
+
+"As I have told you, we simply cannot afford to live even like _this_!
+I'm overdrawn as it is, and----"
+
+"But," broke in Leonie with a gleam of hope, "but I have father's money
+coming to me.  I'm not quite sure how much it is, but you can have
+it--_all_!"
+
+"It's two thousand pounds down for yourself, and two hundred and fifty
+a year in trust for your children--to be given you on your _wedding_
+day."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+It was just a little pitiful exclamation as the girl realised the net
+which was closing about her feet, but from the meshes of which she made
+a last desperate effort to extricate herself.
+
+"I think I--see--a way," she said slowly.  "Yes--listen--this terrible
+mystery that surrounds me, this--this curse which seems to bring
+disaster or pain to everyone I love, simply makes life not worth
+living--so if--if I make a will in your favour, Auntie, dear, and go
+for a swim at Morte Point where the cross currents are--it will----"
+
+But Susan Hetth interrupted violently, horror-stricken at the
+suggestion made indifferently by the girl she loved as far as she was
+capable of loving.
+
+"How is suicide going to help?" she demanded shrilly.  "There would be
+an inquest, every bit of gossip, everything you had ever done would be
+brought to light; the verdict would be insanity----"
+
+"Oh, _Auntie_!"
+
+Driven to desperation and without finesse Susan Hetth flung down her
+trump card.
+
+"But--I--I haven't told you the--the _worst_," she stammered, dabbing
+her eyes with her handkerchief, and peering from behind it at Leonie
+who, wearily pushing the hair off her forehead, stood apathetically
+waiting.
+
+"That--that man"--she jerked her head at the mantelpiece--"has--has a
+hold on me!"
+
+"What---do you mean Sir Walter--do you owe him _money_?" Leonie stared
+in amazement as she spoke.
+
+"Oh, no--it's worse!" came the reply, followed by a curtailed but
+sufficiently dramatic recital of the past indiscretion, to which Leonie
+listened spellbound.
+
+"And you _do_ believe that it was just a bit of bad luck, and that
+there was nothing _really_ wrong in it all, don't you, dear," insisted
+the woman who, like ninety-nine per cent of humans, forgot the real
+tragedy of the moment in the recital of her own pettifogging escapade.
+
+"Absolutely," replied Leonie flatly.
+
+"And you _do_ see the necessity of giving in, now that he has
+threatened me with exposure if you refuse him when he proposes, _don't_
+you, dear?"
+
+"Absolutely," replied Leonie for the second time.
+
+There followed long minutes of silence which the swirl of the waters
+alone dared to break, and then the girl spoke.
+
+"My life," she said very softly to herself; "my lovely, beautiful free
+life done.  The wind, and the birds, and the sea--Auntie--oh,
+Auntie--_Auntie_!"
+
+And she turned and flung herself against the wall with her face crushed
+into her upstretched arms.  "Think of it," she whispered hoarsely,
+"think of it, my youth, my spirit, my body given into that old man's
+keeping.  I who have kept my thoughts, my lips, my eyes for my mate
+that was to be; I who have longed for his love, for the hours and the
+days, and the months, and the years, even unto death, with him.  How
+could----"
+
+There was a click of the gate, and she flung round from the wall,
+dry-eyed, dry-lipped, desperate, as her aunt hurriedly rose.
+
+"It's him--Sir Walter, Leonie--are you going to accept him?"
+
+"Of course," came the steady reply, and Leonie looked the elder woman
+straight in the eyes, which darted this, that, and every way.   "Will
+you go upstairs, please."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Just before dawn Leonie slid in through the window, and the water,
+trickling from the bathing dress which clung to the wonderful figure,
+formed little pools on the faded carpet.
+
+"Nothing will ever make me clean," she whispered,
+"nothing--nothing--nothing.  There is no ocean big or wide or deep
+enough for that, oh! God--my God!"
+
+For five long minutes she stood absolutely still, looking straight and
+unseeingly at the mantelpiece.
+
+Then as a rooster somewhere shrilly heralded the coming day she awoke
+to her surroundings and moved.
+
+Like a beaten dog she crept to her bedroom, and stood staring at the
+reflection of her haggard face in the mirror.  A bird suddenly burst
+into a song of welcome to the dawn which was dyeing the sky rose pink,
+and she crossed to the window-seat, dropped to her knees, and buried
+her lovely head in her outstretched arms, amid the ruins of her
+beautiful Castle of Dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+  "For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain!"--_Pope_.
+
+
+When _empty_ Rockham is a haven of delight, whether the little
+connecting coves be awash with the tide, or the limpets, in an unglued
+state, are airing themselves awaiting the return of the water.
+
+You can wander at will, if you have the right boots on, over the
+never-ending sharp ridges of the rocks; you can pass hours gathering
+_laver_, though it is not at its best just there; and you can find
+sea-anemones and such treasure-trove as pit props, and boxes of butter,
+yea! and even casks of wine after a storm if the gods be kind to you.
+
+Also you can don your bathing dress in comfort behind the wreck, one of
+many, which has remained as witness to the force of the terrific gales
+and the ripping propensities of the saw-teethed rocks.
+
+Walk in from Lee or Mortehoe, Woolacombe or Croyde, over fields in
+which lambs stand on their front feet in exuberance of youth, or caper
+on their back ones until called to order by their maternal parent; or
+through lanes lined with primroses and violets, or roses, or nuts, or
+berries, according to the season, whilst on the top twig of the high
+hedges yellow-hammers, chaffinches, robins and the like gossip to you
+about the hawk hovering in the distance.
+
+Arrived there, pause on the edge of the incline.  _Don't_ go down if
+you see a paper bag fluttering in the breeze, because a paper bag is
+but a forerunner of lanky locks dripping on a towel-covered shoulder,
+and bare and uncomely feet fiddling in the warm sand, whilst adjacent
+is the rock over which the faded blue bathing dress hangs out to dry.
+
+Wait for the empty hour and then fly into the second cove, and the
+next, and the next, but--_don't forget the tide_!
+
+The sand-covered rough-haired terrier stood with his head cocked on one
+side, looking at the wonderful, waving, glistening mass in front of him.
+
+It certainly looked like seaweed, but it didn't smell like it, and long
+bits of it floated in the air just like golden threads; besides, there
+was something uncanny about it which sent thrills into the roots of his
+rough hair, causing it to rise in clumps along his spine.
+
+It looked as if there were something dead underneath, too, and yet it
+didn't; anyway it certainly did not look as though it were meant to be
+played with or barked at; and he hastened back along the treacherous
+narrow passage, which connects the two last coves, in search of
+him-who-knew-all and was never afraid.
+
+"No, old fellow!" was the only response he got to his invitation to
+"come and see."  "I've already been fooled over anemones, and rooks,
+and passing cloud shadows, and very dead starfish--nothing' doin', so
+calm yourself!"
+
+But the dog backed into a pool, emitting barks which were strangled at
+birth, snapped at a bit of rock which caught him unawares upon his
+unprotected flank, trotted forward, backed again into the pool, and
+turning, ran down the passage, came back and did it all over again.
+
+Talk about water-drops wearing away a stone, why they are simply not in
+it when compared with a dog's method of wearing down your resistance.
+After the fifth repetition of the above tactics the man rose,
+stretched, put his pipe in his pocket, and hurling a pebble at the
+delighted quadruped, followed in its wake.
+
+"Just look at that, and don't say I've brought you here for nothing,"
+said the terrier, as plainly as he could with eyes and quivering body
+and tail.
+
+The man looked and held up a finger, which caused the dog to sit up and
+beg, and walked as softly as possible up to Leonie who, tired out with
+worry, heartache, and a long swim, was sitting fast asleep on that one
+slanting, delightfully comfortable rock seat, with her hair spread out
+over her face, and down to her knees, mantle wise, to dry.
+
+It is a somewhat ticklish job to lift an unknown lady's hair and tell
+her abruptly that you think the tide is on the turn, and the man stood
+in perplexity, while his brain refused obstinately to register anything
+more practical than an overwhelming admiration for the picture before
+him.
+
+However, with the attempt to unravel the problem, his hand went
+instinctively to the pocket which held his pipe, and the slight
+movement simultaneously upset his balance and solved the problem.
+
+He slipped with a rasp of nails on rock, waved his arms in a manner
+likely to cause envy in any mere flag-wagger, and recovered himself
+with all the clatter and confusion inseparable, under such
+circumstances, from the saving of self-respect and the knees of skirt
+or breeches.
+
+Quite unconscious that her stockings and high boots were upon another
+rock, her skirt only reached just below the knee and her legs and
+beautiful feet were bare, Leonie sat up as straight as she could and
+peered from between her masses of hair; upon which the dog, thinking
+that he alone was responsible for the discovery of this wild beast,
+yelped and barked and growled as he slid in and out of the pools.
+
+Pushing her hair back, and shielding her eyes from the sun and her face
+from the man, she flashed one swift glance from his shoes to his hair;
+that non-looking, all-seeing glance of woman which leaves fork
+lightning at the post, and causes you to wish you had spent a little
+more time upon your toilet.
+
+Although she had barely looked at him, Leonie could have described the
+man before her down to the minutest detail.
+
+No doubt about it he was good to look upon, with his steady eyes, the
+straight ultra-refined nose with slightly-distended nostrils, and a jaw
+which, in shape and strength, belied the almost feminine beauty of the
+mouth.
+
+He stood well over six feet, though you would hardly have thought so
+because of the massive shoulders which seemed to have been created to
+carry the troubles of the entire world.
+
+His hands, the outward, visible and infallible sign of the inner man,
+were perfect male hands, long and thin with square-tipped sensitive
+fingers, and a certain look of steel about the back and wrists.
+
+But although he had been looking at her steadily for quite a minute,
+owing to some inexplicable overpowering sensation which had seized upon
+him, he would most certainly not have been able to tell you the colour
+of her hair or that her feet were bare.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said quite suddenly and a little hoarsely, "but
+my dog brought me to you--and as I think the tide is on the turn, I
+thought----"
+
+But any further description of his thoughts was cut short in most
+unseemly fashion as, with an ear-splitting bark, the terrier hurled
+himself into the girl's lap, standing up to put its fore-paws round her
+neck, wriggling and squirming until the four feet, collar, and head
+were thoroughly knotted in the beautiful hair.
+
+Leonie held on to her scalp to lessen the pain as stray hairs were
+literally dragged out by the roots, whilst tears of agony streamed down
+her face on to the man's hands as he held the squirming animal and
+endeavoured to loosen its bonds.
+
+"Cut it!"
+
+"What!  All that!"
+
+"Oh!  I can spare it, but I can't stand the pain much longer, and I
+can't bear having my head touched.  Look, I'll hold the dog firmly on
+my lap and bend my head, it won't hurt quite as much then, only do be
+quick!"
+
+She put both hands on the shivering dog, who seemed to have sensed that
+something had gone agley, and pressing him down upon her knees bent her
+head, and her hair fell in waves about the man's feet as he unclasped a
+pocket-knife.
+
+What there was in the attitude, whether it was the humility of the bent
+head or the utter abandon of the waving hair about his knees, the man
+never knew, but he suddenly began to hack savagely and ruthlessly at
+the great strands until the dog was freed and flung far on to the sands.
+
+Then he bent and took hold of Leonie, lifting her bodily from her seat
+into his arms, crushing her desperately against his breast.
+
+Just for one moment he stared down with blazing eyes, the nostrils
+quivering slightly, and the lips drawn back enough to show the white
+even teeth, whilst the rough tweed of his coat marked her cheek, and
+the strength of his arms and hands bruised her body even through her
+clothes; then he frowned, pushed her hair almost roughly right off her
+face, and looked at her with the dawn of recognition in his eyes.
+
+And for just as long Leonie lay quite still, her eyes half closed, her
+scarlet mouth opened slightly, enough to show the small white teeth.
+
+And then, she was standing on her feet with her hands clenched in his
+against his breast.
+
+"_You_!"
+
+"And _you_!" she replied, striving gently to release her hands.
+
+"Forgive me!  For God's sake forgive me!  I--I have no excuse!"
+
+A seagull perched itself on the point of a jagged rock, uttered its
+raucous cry and was gone towards Bull Point Lighthouse shining in the
+sun; a flock of rooks suddenly swirled from the cliffs, screaming
+battle upon their opponents as Leonie answered.
+
+"There is nothing to forgive!  Some things are beyond our ken.  Will
+you get me my boots and stockings?"
+
+Her hands shook ever so slightly under the strain of the control she
+was forcing upon herself, and the pupils of her eyes were strangely
+dilated, looking like bits of night sky set in a moon circle; but she
+spoke and moved quickly as the man, having brought the foot-gear and
+unwound the cut hair from the abject dog, leant down and picked up a
+tough seaweed root.
+
+"No!" she said sharply, laying her hand on his.  "No!  It's too late to
+beat him!"
+
+"I _must_!"
+
+"I say _no_!"
+
+"But you don't understand!"
+
+Her lashes lay like a fringe on the cheek over which swept a flood of
+colour as she whispered so softly that the lap of the water almost
+drowned the word.
+
+"_Please_!"
+
+Save for the murmur of the water there was no sound whatever in the
+rock-strewn empty spot; and save for the swaying of the seaweed in the
+pools there was no movement as those two stood close to each other and
+Fate counted time.
+
+Then Leonie smiled radiantly and sat down upon a rock with a stocking
+in each hand.
+
+"Come and lunch in the next cove!" her companion said in a
+matter-of-fact voice, carefully winding the cut strands of hair and
+slipping them, without asking permission, into his breast pocket.
+"It's not so sunny in there, and I've cold soup and cold chicken,
+salad, jelly and cream--will you?"
+
+"Ra-ther!" said she, beginning to lace her boots.  And picnicking _is_
+fun in the last cove at Rockham.  The air smells so heavenly, the wind
+is so soft, the clouds so lumpy and white; and there are little caves
+in which to dress and undress for the purpose of bathing, to boil the
+kettle, or hunt for those little bits of over-dried wood which go off
+with the report of a pistol and plop out to singe your garments.
+
+And so _very_ few get as far!
+
+Somehow the tide is generally on the turn, and if by chance it is not,
+the tortuous and narrow passages between the coves, with their rocking
+rocks and hidden pools, are enough to twist the ankles and temper of
+anyone who is not Devon born or bred.
+
+"Yes!  I am due to sail for India about this day month," said Jonathan
+Cuxson, Jan for short, a little later, as he drove the cold drumstick
+of a Devon chicken into the paper bag containing salt, while Leonie,
+holding the fellow leg in both hands, or at least the fingers of both
+hands, gnawed right heartily at the middle thereof, and the pardoned
+dog sat quivering with hope deferred.
+
+"Isn't this perfectly wonderful," he went on, and Leonie mumbled
+"whum-whum" as interestedly and politely as her bone would allow.  "I
+mean our meeting like this!"
+
+She smiled and sat forward, resting one hand upon the rocks, and the
+puppy, with a lamentable slump in manners, crawled up from behind and
+gently relieved her of the bone which still had luscious scraps of
+white flesh adhering to it, and a dream of a shining gristly knob at
+the end.
+
+"Your idea of picnicing is somewhat luxurious," she said, taking a
+cardboard plate full of jelly which he had smothered in cream.  "Tell
+me what you are going to make of your life!"
+
+"You must blame or thank Mrs. Pugsley for the luxury.  I'm at
+Woolacombe, perched on the top of the hill, and she simply spoils me.
+Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+Leonie shook her head, and the two great, hastily twisted plaits
+wriggled like shining snakes, causing the dog to lay one paw on his
+bone and snarl.
+
+"I don't smoke!"
+
+"How delightful!" said Jan Cuxson.  "I was sure you didn't--I love
+women who smell of lavender."
+
+"Won't you smoke--your pipe--and tell me what you are going to make of
+your life."
+
+"They--the plans--have all been fogged up this morning !" he said
+slowly after a moment's pause.  "How strange it all is.  Do you know
+that I was going up to town next week to hunt up _you_, of all people?
+Do you remember anything of my father's death?"
+
+"We don't talk about it," said Leonie quietly, and the man looked at
+her with a sudden questioning in the steady eyes.
+
+"I am taking on his work, you know, specialising in the brain.  I have
+got through all my exams quite decently, thanks, I think, to his
+wonderful notes, have travelled a bit in the east, and before settling
+down intended to go to India--what for do you think?"
+
+Leonie shook her head.  "Holiday?"
+
+"Er--yes, almost.  You know I simply _loved_ my father, and his very
+last entry in his book of notes was about _you_.  One line was this:
+'Most interesting--shall go to India and find the ayah.'  He died of
+heart failure, you know, and he must have written the last line before
+he died--it is: 'The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is
+in the third volume upon----'  There was nothing after that--I thought
+he would be awfully pleased if I carried out his last wishes, and meant
+to hunt you up and see if you were still--er--bothered with dreams and
+then----"
+
+He stopped short as Leonie leapt to her feet and ran back from a wave
+which had most unexpectedly swirled upon her from behind a rock.
+
+"Quick!" she laughed, "quick--the tide will be in.  Where's the dog?"
+
+The dog was cavorting with a crab in a pool.
+
+"Jingles!" sternly admonished his master, who was heaving everything
+pell-mell into his haversack.  "By the way, what became of Jingles the
+first?"
+
+A shadow crept into Leonie's eyes as she thought of the pain and
+disaster she invariably seemed to bring to those she loved most.
+
+"He--he was run over--it was my fault, I whistled him across the road
+and a car caught him.  If we hurry," she continued, "we shall be in
+time for tea--Auntie will love to see you again!"
+
+"Oh! of course--I'd almost forgotten her--will she?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+  "He that rebuketh a wicked man getteth
+  himself a blot!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+By all the ill-luck in the world Sir Walter Hickle was sitting in the
+patch called the garden, turning a small parcel elatedly over and over
+in his pocket, as Leonie, and her companion, and the dog came sliding
+down the hill towards the cottage.
+
+For the time being Leonie had totally forgotten the proceedings of the
+night before, which had metamorphosed her radiant self from a free into
+a bond woman.
+
+"Oh!" she said, putting one hand unexpectedly on Jan Cuxson's arm and
+digging her stick fiercely into the ground, as the man in the garden
+half rose from his chair and sank back with a frown.
+
+"Oh!" she repeated.
+
+"Tired, dear?"
+
+Neither of them noticed the little endearing word which had slipped out
+so naturally, but Leonie's face was wan and her eyes were dead as she
+dragged herself down the last few yards, while her aunt fluttered down
+to the gate to meet them, with her mind and skirts in a whirl.
+
+"Jan Cuxson!" she exclaimed, offering a limp hand, and "How _very_
+nice," she continued, lying quite successfully.  "I should have known
+you anywhere.  _Do_ come in and have tea!"
+
+And in the same breath, and with that strange cruel cunning of the
+shallow mind, which is the abortive twin of decent feminine intuition,
+she leapt at the difficulty she saw threatening, and tried to dispel it.
+
+"Let me introduce you to Sir Walter Hickle, my niece's fiance."
+
+Sir Walter ambled forward with outstretched hand as Cuxson, nodding
+curtly, bent to pick up Leonie's stick, which had clattered to the
+floor.
+
+A malicious gleam shone in the elder man's little eyes as he looked at
+the splendid young fellow who had seemed, physically anyway, so fit a
+match for Leonie as they tramped down the hill together; and though
+there was no sign of his inward perplexity and repulsion in Jan
+Cuxson's face as his eyes swept the obese figure of the notorious old
+knight, his jaw took a sudden, almost ugly, outward thrust with the
+birth of a mighty resolution.
+
+Leonie walked to the gate with him when he took his departure, having
+refused tea from a certain undefined feeling that he could not even sit
+in the same room as the man whom he intended to do out of the odd trick.
+
+He crushed Leonie's hand as he looked straight into her eyes, so
+desperate and ashamed, and spoke very gently and deliberately as he
+slipped his hand to her wrist and pulled her a little closer.
+
+"I shall be in the last cove to-morrow at eleven, waiting for you."
+
+And naturally Leonie had responded to the mastery in the voice, as all
+women do respond when the voice is the right one; and a soft wave of
+colour swept from chin to brow as she turned from the gate, and walked
+through the doorway straight to her bedroom; while her future lord
+pranced furiously among the bric-a-brac, and her aunt's beads and
+bracelets clashed against the china as she wrung her hands over the tea
+things, and portending disaster.
+
+Leonie sat down on her bed with her eyes shining like stars.
+
+The lid of her life's casket had opened wide, and from under a hideous
+heap of fear, disgust, lost illusions, and despair, hope had sprung,
+spreading her iridescent wings in the warmth of love.
+
+She sat until the shadows crept about her, then got up from her bed
+with a little laugh, and descended to give battle for her life and
+freedom.
+
+Think of every synonym connected with the word tumult and you will get
+a vague idea of the storm which crashed about the girl's defenceless
+head as she stood with her back to the door of the tiny sitting-room,
+with a perfectly gorgeous diamond ring sparkling and flashing in front
+of her upon a table.
+
+"I cannot marry you, Sir Walter, I simply cannot do it," she was
+saying, slowly and distinctly.  "You must let me go.  So please give
+the ring to somebody else, there are heaps of girls ever--oh, ever so
+much nicer than me!"
+
+She smiled sweetly as she picked up the ring and held it out to the
+man, who snatched it from her as he sprang to his feet, and hurled it
+through the window.
+
+Then he moved to the other side of the table and leant both clenched
+fists upon it as he looked Leonie up and down.
+
+"You needn't wear the ring, my girl," he said slowly, "but no one picks
+Walter Hickle up one day and throws him down the next.  You're going to
+marry me this day month, you take that straight from me.  Let's hear
+why you've changed your mind so sudden; willing to marry last night,
+unwilling to marry to-day.
+
+"Come on, now, out with it!" he suddenly shouted, bringing his hand
+with a crash on the table as Leonie hesitated, blushing divinely.
+
+"Only--be-cause I--I don't love you, Sir Walter, and it's--it's _not_
+right to marry without love!"
+
+"Posh!  There wasn't so much of this 'ere right to marry last night.
+Fallen in love with that young feller-me-lad, I suppose.  Where did you
+meet him?  What were you doing?  How--how----"
+
+Leonie turned the handle of the door, but shrank back as the man, with
+a bound, flung himself at her and wrenched her hand free; and Susan
+Hetth clashed her bracelets and bits as she put her hands tightly over
+her face, in her fright forgetting the mixture of colours she heaped on
+it daily in the hope of stemming the neap tide of old age.
+
+"Get out, you there!" snarled the man, lashed to fury by the whip of
+jealousy.  "Get out, go away, wash your face--you look like a--a--like
+a damned fut'rist, get _out_!"
+
+And not daring to pass the two near the door, she prepared to get, with
+a great loss of dignity, through the bow window; in fact, one foot was
+just over the sill when the man called her back.
+
+"Come back," he bellowed, "I want you as witness to what I'm goin' to
+say to your niece, the young lady what plays fast and loose with honest
+men.  Fast and loose, I _don't_ fink!"
+
+Leonie shuddered as the veneer of refinement cracked under the strain
+of the man's rage, showing the brutality and grossness immediately
+underneath.
+
+She pulled her hand free, and backed towards the mantelpiece, against
+which she leant, staring at him.
+
+"I am not going to marry you!"
+
+The voice was low but positive, and the quiet in the room was intense
+as Sir Walter bounced up within a foot of her and shook a fat
+forefinger in her face.
+
+"Aren't you," he said, "aren't you!  And I'll just tell you three
+things what'll make you change your tune, my girl.
+
+"One," he placed the fat forefinger on the ill-bred thumb, "an' the
+least important, you'll marry me 'cos you're an 'etth, daughter of
+Colonel Bob Hetth, V.C., an' your fut'rist aunt ain't--hasn't half
+rubbed it in about the Hetths never breaking their word, I give you
+mine!"
+
+"Please leave my father's name out of this," quietly replied Leonie,
+her face dead white from the sickening thudding of her heart.
+
+"Well, if you don't keep your word, Miss tiger cat, I'll run you in for
+breach of promise, an' bring your father's name into court!"
+
+"You couldn't!"
+
+"_Couldn't_!--couldn't what?" stormed the man.
+
+"Run," said Leonie gently, and added sweetly, and with great vulgarity,
+"you're too fat!"
+
+"Two!" continued Sir Walter, purple in the face, but wisely ignoring
+the insult to his person.  "You'll marry me 'cos no one else'll have
+you.  You're batty, my gel--gone in the top storey--can't even go out
+to work for your living 'cause you ain't always to be trusted.  I know
+all about yer, but I'm willin' to take the risk.  There won't be any
+trapersin' round the 'ouse after dark once yer married to me, I give
+you my word.  Course, if you like to go on spungin' on your aunt,
+obligin' her to live in a 'ole like this, well, that's your look
+h'out--'ardly up to mark tho', being an 'etth, daughter of a V.C."
+
+His small eyes gleamed as they rested on Leonie's stricken face.
+
+"Stop, please," she said hurriedly, "I can't stand any more just now.
+I--I couldn't really.  Will you give me a week to think it over?"
+
+The man laughed contemptuously.
+
+"A few days, a few hours, then?"
+
+There was something horrible in the humiliation of the girl's pleading,
+but it made not the slightest impression on the ex-costermonger, who
+had at one time been accustomed to enforcing his commands with the
+buckle end of his waist-belt.
+
+"Not a minute, not a second," he chortled, seeing the end of the chase
+in sight.  "Think of the 'old I have on yer aunt.  Lady Susan Hetth,
+sister of Colonel Bob 'etth, V.C., creeping out h'of a gentleman's
+rooms at three h'o'clock of the mornin' an' payin' me 'ush money--think
+of h'it.  _Now_ what 'ev you got to say.  Why don't you be sensible an'
+quiet, gal?  I've _got_ yer, it ain't no use kickin'.  Be sensible an'
+I'll smother you in di'monds, give yer two Rolls-Royce, yacht, Monty
+Carlo any time, Park Lane--make every other woman want ter scratch yer
+eyes out--what more _could_ yer want?  Now what have yer got to say!"
+
+What was there to say?
+
+Aunt Susan tried to obliterate herself behind the window curtain; Sir
+Walter, thumbs in armholes, tilted himself backwards and forwards on
+toe and heel as Leonie came forward and leant with both hands the
+table, as she looked from one to the other without speaking.
+
+In fact the silence became intolerable to Sir Walter, who had expected,
+and would have thoroughly enjoyed a heated altercation, in which he
+would have known exactly where he was.
+
+"Well, what 'ev yer got to say, my gel?"
+
+Leonie looked from one to the other.
+
+"I will marry you this day month, Sir Walter."  She threw up her hand
+as he laughed triumphantly.  "Wait one moment!  But until that day I
+will have nothing to do with you, _nothing_.  I will not meet you nor
+go out with you, nor bother about a trousseau, nor the future in any
+way.  I shall go out and come in when I like, and go where and how I
+like.  I shall meet whom I like.  I won't deceive you, I shall meet Jan
+Cuxson just as often as I like.  And I should advise you not to
+interfere with me in any way.  He is young and strong, and, as an old
+friend of the family, might resent it.  You can trust him, he is a
+gentleman--which means--oh, well!--you will find the exact meaning in a
+French dictionary."
+
+She crossed to the door, turned, and looked, slowly from one to the
+other.
+
+"Is the bargain concluded?"
+
+"Yes!--I'll take yer on those terms--but you'll pay a 'undred per cent
+interest on the month, I've lent yer--an' _then_ some I give yer _my_
+word!"
+
+The door shut quietly as the man sank into a chair.
+
+"Batty!" he said as he mopped his bald head, "absolutely balmy.  But
+it's worth while--it's worth while--let her have 'er month--let 'er--I
+shall have a whole lifetime to break 'er in."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+  "Why fret about them if to-day be sweet!"--_Omar Khayyam_.
+
+
+The great grey breakers heaved themselves skywards, paused for half a
+second, split and crashed down upon the rocks the next morning as
+Leonie and Jan Cuxson sat on the sands under the lowering sky.
+
+They had argued, analysed, plotted, and planned, only to find that each
+road they launched out upon full of hope, terminated in the blind alley
+of the old man's power over the girl.
+
+"I've just got to go through with it," said Leonie, "there is simply no
+way out."
+
+The man caught both hands in his.
+
+"Dear heaven, how I love you, child!  How I long to pick you up, as I
+did all those years ago, and carry you out of all this to happiness.
+Leonie!  Leonie!  You must marry me, I love you so."
+
+And she had sat quite still, not daring to move for fear of the mighty
+passion which surged about her.
+
+Yes!  Quite true!  They had only met twice; but there is a certain kind
+of love, exceeding rare it's true in Europe, which from an
+infinitesimal seed is capable in one second of blossoming into a tree,
+fruit and all, in the shade of which you can sit content until your
+life's end.
+
+It simply sprouts all over the East.
+
+Wishing to prevent a conflagration Leonie spoke quite calmly as she
+withdrew her hands.
+
+"And I couldn't marry you, even if I were free, because--at times--as I
+have just told you--they say that I--I--am not responsible for my
+actions?  I'm--I'm supposed to be----"
+
+"Be quiet!"
+
+Cuxson pulled her fiercely into his arms, crushing her cheek against
+his.
+
+"Tell me all, every detail."
+
+They sat there as the tide went out, and the man registered the facts
+of the tragic tale in his mind, eager to be out on the trail of the
+mystery overshadowing the girl he loved.
+
+"Mad!" he laughed when she had finished, "_mad_!--no more than I am,
+and I'm sane enough in all conscience except in my love for you.  I
+shall go to India, and wring or bribe the truth out of that ayah.  But
+we needn't worry about the date of starting yet a while, and between
+then and now we shall have found a way out of this seeming impasse.
+What is it?"
+
+Leonie had twisted herself suddenly out of his arms, looked over her
+shoulders and shivered.
+
+"It is what I was telling you about, a sensation of someone standing
+close behind me."
+
+"It's nothing, Leonie, just imagination," said Jan Cuxson.
+
+For how could he see a certain high caste native of India walking
+slowly down the gangway from the great ship just docked at Tilbury, and
+smiling inscrutably as he placed his foot in the country which held the
+white woman he sought?
+
+Leonie turned her head quickly, and shivered again, violently.
+
+"It was just as though someone had called me," she said, speaking just
+above a whisper.
+
+"Look at me, dear!"
+
+Leonie looked straight into the honest grey eyes, and the fear died out
+of her own as she met the steady gaze.
+
+"I'm slow, dear, dead slow, plodding I suppose they'd call me, but once
+I'm on to something I never let go until I've won.  Things are black,
+sweetheart, but something is telling me that I shall find a way out.
+When--when is----"
+
+Leonie lied.
+
+It was beyond her power of will to place a limit to her sudden newborn
+happiness; she would not give a definite date, and relying on the
+certainty that the man would never allow anyone to gossip to him about
+the wedding, she lied--deliberately.
+
+"Oh! there's _plenty_ of time, don't let's talk about it."
+
+She sprang to her feet and flung out her arms to the sea.
+
+"Let's forget, Jan, let's forget!  Let's steal something from Fate and
+be happy.  Let's be friends, pals; we can't be anything else, because I
+am in honour bound.  And--and--I'm _so_ hungry "--she turned her
+radiant, laughing face to him--"I'll race you to Barricane for tea."
+
+She was off as she spoke, with Cuxson close behind.  They jumped from
+rock to rock, they slipped, they slithered, they splashed up to their
+knees in pools and out again.
+
+The man did not break the compact when he caught her in the shadow of
+the wreck and drew her into the shelter of his arms.
+
+"Pal!" he whispered.  "Little pal!"
+
+And she lay quite still until the thud of their hearts, caused by the
+strenuous exercise, had given place to the stronger, steadier beat of
+steadfast love; then she slipped down, ducked under his arms and was
+away, and her laugh was caught by the wind and blown back to him as he
+ran in hot pursuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+  "Write them upon the table of thine heart!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Leonie's wrist watch very softly chimed midnight, announcing in gentle
+tones the birth of her wedding-day, as she sat with her chin in her
+hands staring out to sea.
+
+She frowned and pulled savagely at the band until it broke; there was a
+faint crash, and a faint splash, as the watch, hurtling through the
+air, ricocheted from a rock into a pool as the girl stretched her arms
+above her head, leant back, and closed her eyes.
+
+Her last midnight swim, the last time she would slip the bathing dress
+over her beautiful virgin body, the last time she would revel in
+freedom, oh! the last time of anything decent, and pure, and sweet.
+
+She had not lost her heart or her head, in fact she had gone through
+none of those amorous gymnastics which seem necessary to the cardiac
+state of being in love.
+
+She _loved_, and she knew it, and confessed it on her knees at night,
+and when she walked, or swam, or rode, or carried her food on her back,
+or braided her hair in the day.  She was loved and she knew it, and
+thanked her God when she lay down to sleep at night, and when she
+shopped, or placated her petulant relation, or played bridge or the
+piano equally badly, or got wet through in the storm, and tanned by the
+wind.
+
+Many times Sir Walter had almost been on the verge of giving her her
+desire.
+
+_Almost_!  Because it only needed two things to make him toe the line
+of sensual infatuation; the first being the graciousness of every line
+of her beautiful person when she met him by chance; and the second, the
+ungraciousness of her distinctly unpleasant manner upon the same
+occasion, over both of which he promised himself as he inwardly raged
+at her frequent, prolonged and unexplained absences, he would shortly
+have full control.
+
+The month had slipped by so quickly, the month in which she had
+indifferently left to her aunt and fiance the choosing of her
+trousseau, and the arrangement of the ceremony; also the honeymoon,
+that subsequent insight into purgatory which she was to endure as best
+she could in an isolated, thatched cottage t'other side of Hartland
+Point.
+
+A month during which she had walked, and talked, and walked again with
+Jan Cuxson, who caused her heart to thud heavily even though he did not
+touch her hand in greeting, or parting, or at any other time.
+
+They had gathered _laver_--that most delectable vegetable-seaweed--at
+the base of the Woolacombe rocks; dug and scratched for the elusive
+cowrie shell in the sands of Barricane Beach; devoured Mrs. Parker's
+teas of bread and butter and cream, jam and cake, laid on snow-white
+cloth upon trestle table; and watched their flat-pebbled ducks and
+drakes skip more or less successfully across the waters.
+
+They had tramped to Croyde, George Ham, Saunton, and all the other
+lovely spots, and whistled over the lighthouse wall at Bull Point to be
+regaled by tea on a tray, handed over by one of the perfectly charming
+family of Howgego, which comprises the lighthouse keeper, his wife, and
+his bonny daughter.
+
+All this had been done by stealth.
+
+Creeping about the cottage in stockinged feet at dawn, polishing the
+high boots before retiring to bed until they shone again; packing the
+haversack, creeping out of the cottage, vaulting the wall to the left
+to evade the gate which either jammed or creaked, and away up the steep
+incline, also to the left, and to wherever love listed.
+
+Upbraidings at night are quite bearable when the heart is aglow, and
+the future dimmed by present happiness; but upbraidings in the early
+morning are quite intolerable when the outlook into the future shows a
+black abyss through the medium of an empty stomach.
+
+She had seized upon every passing moment, wringing the uttermost out of
+it that she might have something put by with which to fill in the
+blanks of the drear future, the vacuum where should have been a
+tumultuously throbbing heart of love, and a pulse of life and passion.
+
+Also did she glean and garner, so as to be tucked in stray corners,
+memories of a flower in a hedgerow, a boat on the wing, a look in a
+dog's eyes, and the indescribable smell of a mixture of tobacco, sea
+air, and leather; and all the other little genuine antique, and ever
+new odds-and-ends of the collection labelled Love in the heart museum.
+
+Not a word had she said about the wedding.
+
+Cowardly?  Yes, indeed!  But if a prisoner were given a bottle of
+champagne to drink just before his death by hanging, it's odds on that
+instead of merely tasting a few drops he would drink the whole bottle,
+and go to his doom with the exultant thought of something nice, anyway,
+having happened to cheer him on his final exit.
+
+She simply radiated love, and allowed neither the frequent upbraidings
+of her distracted aunt, nor the hourly approach of the fatal day to dim
+the sunlight of the hour in hand.
+
+"Never you worry," she said one day, when her aunt had waylaid and
+implored her to have her wedding-dress fitted, "We'll pin it with
+safety-pins if it doesn't hang right, and as long as I'm at the church
+door on time, nothing else really matters.  And I've given you my word
+on that."
+
+And she had vaulted the wall and taken a short cut through the golf
+course until she had come up behind the man who loved her; and he,
+reading the trouble in her strange eyes, had drawn her hands to his
+heart and held them tight.
+
+How often had they stood in the shade of the fir trees in the heat of
+the day, with the intoxicating smell of the pines in their nostrils,
+and the soothing sound of the humming of many bees in their ears.
+
+They had stood so still, so close, and so very much alone.
+
+Oh! he loved her and her ways!
+
+Loved the rarity of her beauty, and the vitality of her body, loved the
+extreme care she took not to allow her fingers to touch his when
+passing a cup or a hefty sandwich.
+
+Revelled in the surge of colour which swept her face when sometimes he
+caught and steadied her on a rock; and the way in which, when sitting
+on the sand, she would suddenly scrunch up her knees with her arms for
+no apparent reason, and bury her scarlet mouth, and the eyes which
+betrayed her, in the rough tweed of her skirt.
+
+He exulted in the little half-catch of her breath, the little happy
+laugh, the extra polish he knew she put on her boots just for his sake;
+and, above all, that perfect sense of virgin woman which emanated from
+her, allied to the promise of a passion which most inhabitants of a
+northern clime would have utterly misconstrued and misunderstood.
+
+Yes!  He revelled and he exulted in every minute of every hour spent
+with her; blinded with love, led astray by the thought of months ahead
+in which he felt that Fate surely would find a way out for them, he let
+the time slip by, up to the moment when Leonie said good-bye quite
+gravely, shaking her head without a smile at the usual invitation to
+meet on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+  "Working spells
+  Upon a mind o'erwrought!"--_Thomas Hardy_.
+
+
+Secure in the solitude of her last few hours of freedom; oblivious of the
+fact that her aunt, enraged and alarmed at the unseemly and most untimely
+absence of the morrow's bride, was idiotically wringing her hands as she
+ran up and down in front of the cottage; worn out and weary with despair,
+Leonie, in her bathing dress, had gone to sleep with the full moon
+shining down upon the small, pale face, full of shadows.
+
+Jan Cuxson, uneasy at the girl's curt refusal to meet him during the last
+twenty-four hours, had started to walk to Woolacombe from Ilfracombe
+where he had spent a wretched, restless, futile day.
+
+He had tramped through the sleeping village of Lee without a look at the
+historic cottage once inhabited by the Three Old Maids, and along to the
+other little cottage on the sea front where the absence of light in
+Leonie's room caused him to guess that she was abroad.  He passed as
+quietly and quickly as possible, having determined to avoid the place for
+fear of meeting the aunt, or old Hickle, and losing his self-control.
+
+As long as you know exactly where to lay your hand on them you don't
+worry overmuch about your gold cigarette case, or your favourite pipe, or
+the diamond brooch you pin haphazard into your laces; but mislay them for
+a moment and see what a turmoil of inquietude you will be in!
+
+Never doubting the honesty of his beloved, tricked as it were by her
+happy, care-free attitude, the man had drifted contentedly in the sun of
+love, and the month of June; but to-night a bank of clouds was rising to
+meet the moon half-way upon her celestial journey, and the winds of doubt
+and uneasiness were lifting the corners of that warm, comforting mantle
+of serenity which we seldom have a chance to take down from its peg in
+the wardrobe of life.
+
+Yesterday she had left him with a flat refusal to meet him, and her eyes
+had been like the eyes of the dead, and her hands had been like ice, and
+her voice had been most uncompromisingly final.
+
+All day he had argued with himself, surmised and made excuses, sunned
+himself in the cove at Rapparree, assuring himself stubbornly that
+everything was quite all right; and at last, dinnerless, desperate, and
+afraid, had started off hot foot to find her; intending to crush the
+resistance out of her with the outpourings of his love, and force her to
+risk everything for the sake of a life-long happiness.
+
+It was just about one o'clock when he scrunched past the rusty old wreck
+and clambered up and over the rocks and through the opening to the second
+cove; and his heart leapt as he steadied himself when his eyes found that
+which they had eagerly sought; then missed a beat as, for some unknown
+reason, he stood stock still, and drew back into the shadows.
+
+Leonie was standing knee deep in a pool.
+
+The saw-edged rocks rose behind her, shining like steel in the moonlight;
+great strands of seaweed swirled about her, for all the world like
+snakes, weaving in and out of the burnished hair which spread itself
+fanwise on the water about her knees.
+
+Save for the thinnest, finest silk bathing dress which clung to the
+perfect body, as does the soft fragrant skin to the peach, she was nude,
+and so unaware of eyes upon her that the man held his breath, fearing she
+might spy him in the shade.
+
+He knew, as everyone knows, that through the criminal teaching of the
+girl-child in Europe, she would have had it instilled into her mind as
+soon as it was capable of understanding, that the slightly draped _tout
+ensemble_ of her glorious body was something to be thoroughly well
+ashamed of, though on other occasions, by means of slit skirts and
+excessive decolletage, she could expose in sections just as much as she
+liked to the eyes of any alien waiter who hung over her with the sauce,
+or any chauffeur who helped her into a car.
+
+Her eyes were wide and staring straight in his direction, and that she
+was asleep he had not the faintest idea.
+
+So clearly was she outlined against the rock that every line of the
+lovely limbs, every exquisite curve of the beautiful bosom showed as
+plainly as if she had been standing in the broad light of noon as she
+stepped out of the pool.
+
+With face upturned, and arms outstretched to the moon, she stood
+undulating slightly with the exquisite movements of the nautch girl,
+which has nothing to do with the _danse de ventre_ and other such
+disgusting muscular exhibitions.
+
+Watch a spider's thread floating in the air at dawn, then you will get
+some idea of the gentle, supple, alluring movement.
+
+The wind, blowing up before the storm, blew against her hair, and it
+streamed out in front of her; her arms, twining and twisting, slid in and
+out of the silky mass until she appeared to have at least four; her
+exquisite feet seemed to beat upon a human figure which was really
+nothing but the shadow of the rock behind her, and Jan Cuxson, in the
+shadows, suddenly smote his forehead as she lifted up her voice and cried:
+
+"Kali!  Kali!  Kali!"
+
+The word thrice repeated rose softly on the night air, but struck like a
+hammer upon the ears of the man who, in studying the brain, had found
+himself often and inextricably entangled in the religions and mysteries
+of the East.
+
+"My God!" he whispered, "My God, she is asleep and----"
+
+But he never moved as Leonie suddenly showed that she was aware of his
+presence.
+
+It was not that she saw him, or that she knew him; she was simply aware
+that a man was watching her.
+
+Not once did the eyelids close over the glaring eyes shining like two
+green phosphorescent stones; not a sign of recognition showed in her face
+as she laughed the sweetest little laugh in the world and moved towards
+him.
+
+Jan Cuxson had travelled pretty widely in the last few years, and had
+seen almost every kind of dance in the various ports at which he had
+called, and the towns he had visited in the East, but for absolute
+voluptuousness, and the portrayal of physical passions, he had never seen
+anything to compare with this which he watched horror-stricken by the sea.
+
+"What have they done to her?  What have they done to her?  What spell has
+been cast?  What cruel thing have they done to her?"
+
+Over and over again the questions raced unanswered through his brain.
+
+For at the thrice repeated cry he had understood in a flash that
+fastidious, pure, innocent Leonie was unconsciously performing the
+preliminary rites customary to the worship of Kali, the goddess of death,
+the wife of Siva, the daughter of the Himalayas; which rights might best
+be described as a prolonged and terrible orgy of every passion known to
+man.
+
+And well was it for Leonie Hetth that Jan Cuxson was straight and
+thoroughbred, and that his love was pure, else might it have gone badly
+with her, bringing her perchance to the door of the madhouse; for there
+is but a hair's breadth between those who are wakened roughly from the
+sleep in which they walk, and act, and speak, and those who rave in
+padded cells.
+
+She held out her beautiful, bare arms in invitation, and as he remained
+quite motionless, glided ever so swiftly to him, so close that he felt
+the sweetness of her breath upon his cheek.
+
+"Behold!" she cried softly in perfect Hindustani, "Behold!  O my beloved!
+has the Sweet One! the Gentle One! the most blessed Mother looked with
+graciousness upon her children!  May our lips cling in worship, yea! and
+our bodies in worship!  She looketh with soft eyes upon our love, blessed
+is she, O! Durga! most terrible, most fierce, most cruel!"
+
+Jan Cuxson hesitated.
+
+If he put his arms about her she might waken at any moment, and then the
+shame and horror of it all.
+
+If he did not respond might she not hurt herself in her wrath as do those
+who worship the Black One, and of whom he had heard in his travels in
+India.
+
+What on earth was he to do?
+
+And where was he to find the strength to resist the overpowering appeal
+of the sweet passion she offered him.
+
+He loved her, desired her, hungered for the touch of the sweet mouth, and
+there she stood in her youth, her innocence, her beauty, asking to be
+held against his heart, touching his hands gently with her finger-tips,
+desirous of his mouth, his hands, his love.
+
+And even as he hesitated wild anger swept over the beautiful face, making
+it terrible to behold as she raised it to the moon with a laugh that made
+the man shudder to his soul, and gasp as she suddenly tore her bathing
+suit from her and held it towards him in both hands.  He unconsciously
+took it from her, whereupon she shook from head to foot with wild
+unseemly laughter, and her glorious hair swept about her, hiding her
+completely from the desperate eyes that watched her.
+
+"Behold, O Parvati! who steppeth lightly upon the mountains!  Behold! has
+he chosen my raiment, therefore shalt thou be pleased!  Yea! and even
+shall there be blood upon it!" [1]
+
+And swinging her arm she struck it again and again against the rocks
+until the flesh was torn and the blood streamed, causing the man to move
+hurriedly with intent to waken the girl he loved, even at the risk of her
+reason and his ultimate happiness.  But he stopped.
+
+Leonie was standing still with uplifted arms, dripping blood upon her
+face whilst her sweet, clear voice rose sonorously in the _Vega_ hymn
+known as the Love Spell.
+
+Jan Cuxson had studied Hindustani in preparation for his travels in
+India, but he frowned as he listened, for he did not understand one
+syllable.
+
+And then his eyes opened wide in astonishment as he caught the meaning of
+a word here and there, and "Sanskrit!" he muttered in amazement.
+
+Pulling a piece of pale green seaweed from the rock, she twined it and
+whispered, "This plant is honey born; with honey we dig thee; forth from
+honey art thou engendered; do thou make us possessed of honey.
+
+"At the tip of my tongue, honey; at the root of my tongue, honeyedness;
+mayest thou be altogether in my power, mayest thou come unto my intent.
+
+"Honeyed is my in-stepping, honeyed my forthgoing, with my voice I speak
+what is honeyed, may I be of honey aspect.
+
+"Than honey am I sweeter, than the honey plant more honeyed; of me,
+verily shalt thou be fond, as of a honeyed branch.
+
+"About thee with an encompassing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to
+absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
+mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+Leonie swayed slightly as the words passed faintly and yet more faintly,
+like a moan, from her lips; her eyes were closing slowly, very slowly;
+and she slipped to her knees, her bleeding arms held out towards the man
+before whom she knelt, as the breeze blew her glistening hair this way
+and that, exposing for a second, then hiding the glories of the exquisite
+white figure from the eyes which could not help but see.
+
+Drooping lower and lower she stretched herself, face downwards, upon the
+sand, closed her eyes as the moon sank suddenly behind a dense mass of
+clouds, and peacefully went to sleep.
+
+
+[1]In one of the rites concerning the worship of Kali, women's garments
+are thrown in a heap, from which men choose indiscriminately.  The
+garment he chooses gives the man a right to the woman who owns it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+  "And wilt thou leave me thus
+  That hath given thee my heart?--Say nay!  Say nay!"--Sir T. Wyatt.
+
+
+What in heaven's name was he to do now?
+
+Touch her he would not; let her know that he had seen her in all her
+unhidden beauty he could not; yet the gurgling and rustling and
+whispering between the water and the stones told him that the tide was
+racing in, and that what he intended to do he must do right quickly.
+
+All he wanted to do was to gather her up in his strong arms, and
+wakening her with kisses carry her to safety.
+
+Safety from the sea, safety from the unknown spell which had been laid
+upon her, safety from the horrible future; a safety he felt which could
+only be found within the circumference of his arms folded about her in
+love.
+
+But instead he looked round for the garments she must have left
+somewhere, and seeing them, stepped quietly across the widening pools
+and gathered up the soft, sweet-smelling heap of dainty raiment;
+clenching his hands tight upon them to prevent himself from burying his
+face in the perfumed delicate things which he had not the right even to
+touch.
+
+A little knot of pale pink bebe ribbon came away in his hand, and he
+twisted it around the seaweed ring she had twined about his finger,
+then untwisted them both and slipped them into his pocket, and stooped
+to pick up something which had slipped from the garments and tinkled on
+the rocks.
+
+"Oh, you beauty!" he said as he held the jewel out in his open hand,
+and "Oh, you brute!" he said again is the cat's-eye winked cunningly at
+him with the knowledge of all ages in its lustrous depths.
+
+Then he went back, crushing his flimsy burden to his heart; and placing
+it upon a rock near the sleeping girl, strode off to the opening of the
+little connecting cove, where he stood in the shadows and called;
+
+"Leonie!  Are you there, Leonie?"
+
+Leonie stirred, settled down again to sleep, and stirred each time the
+voice rang insistently.
+
+Who knows if love would have brought her back to consciousness and the
+immediate necessity to rise and clothe herself, and flee for safety?
+
+Anyway, the tide decided and sent a little wave that thoroughly
+drenched her and brought her to her knees shivering and bewildered.
+
+"Tide in!"
+
+She glanced round hurriedly and drew her hand across her eyes.
+
+"Funny!" she said as she retreated before a wave which surged over the
+rocks and swirled up behind her.  "But--why--I've nothing on!  And my
+arm!--why, I'm simply cut to bits.  And--and oh! I've been
+dreaming--and how dark it is; there must be a storm coming!"
+
+As she spoke she hurriedly flung herself into her clothes, biting her
+lips as the lace and ribbons caught in the horrible gash in her arm,
+and was standing waiting for the water to recede before she jumped,
+just as a voice as from heaven itself called.
+
+"Leonie! where are you?  Leonie, the tide is coming in!"
+
+She did not wait, she jumped clear, stumbling and falling on the other
+side, ripping her feet until they bled.
+
+Then she got up and ran blindly, impelled by terror pursued by the fear
+of something far more terrible than death.
+
+"Jan!  Jan! help me!"
+
+Without a word he caught her and lifted her, holding her closely.
+
+Never a word he said as they raced through from one cove to the other,
+neither when the waters buffeted him nor when weeds twined about his
+feet, and rocks impeded him.
+
+Swiftly he carried her up the slight incline and laid her on the grass,
+took off his coat, ripped out his shirt sleeve, and tearing it into
+strips, bound up the bleeding arm.
+
+Then sitting down beside her he leant over sideways and picked her up
+bodily, clear from the ground into his arms; no mean feat with a toilet
+jug full of water, let alone with a hefty maiden weighted with grief.
+
+He held her in that heavenly, comforting clasp known and practised by
+stout old nurses and some mothers, within which you feel that you can
+defy anything, even to the onslaughts of peevish Fortune.
+
+His left arm was under and round her shoulders, his left hand gently
+pressed her head against his breast, his right arm was round her just
+above the knees, and he rocked her gently.
+
+Oh! the heavenly, comforting bliss!
+
+History was repeating itself, for Leonie, with great dry sobs shaking
+her from head to feet, was snuffling into Jan Cuxson's collar as she
+had snuffled into his father's years ago.
+
+"Beloved!"
+
+Sobs.
+
+"Beloved! there is nothing to cry about--_nothing_!  As I am holding
+you now, so shall I always hold you, and no harm can come to you from
+ocean, tempest or life.  _Nothing_ can hurt you because I love you!"
+
+Sobs.
+
+"_Leonie_!"
+
+She lay absolutely still, unconsciously counting the beats of his heart
+which was thudding heavily against her right shoulder, and waiting for
+the moment when she would find the strength at last to turn down her
+"empty glass."
+
+"Leonie! you've got to listen to me now, and I am not going to ask you
+to decide because Fate has decided for you.  And oh! beloved, beloved,
+thank heaven that there is still time, that you are still free, that
+heaven instead of hell is waiting for you.  Yes! dear heart.  Fate has
+decided!"
+
+He stroked her hair as he looked down into the little face crushed
+against his shoulder, and shifted her a wee bit that she might rest
+more comfortably.  Leonie closed her eyes and trembled from head to
+foot as Fate pinched the decision between claw-like thumb and finger so
+that it was stillborn.
+
+"Dear," continued Jan Cuxson as he gently patted her shoulder with his
+left hand, "dear, oh! my dear, just as I hold you now, so I shall
+always hold you.  I am going to keep you, marry you, and take you right
+away to India next week; I'll telegraph that my things are not to be
+put on board to-morrow.  You must have a nervous breakdown to-day,
+_you_ darling, just to think of _that_," and his laugh rang out against
+the sullen stillness of the dawn, "then we will slip away, and get
+married, and--oh! Leonie, I _love_ you."
+
+Leonie said no word, but from her head to her feet swept a thrill which
+the man felt from his feet to his head.
+
+He laughed again, laughed as a god might laugh with the world in his
+hand, and crushed her fiercely to him.
+
+"Beloved!  I love you! love you! love you!  And you?  Tell me you love
+me!  Why, you dare not look me in the face and say no!  You love me,
+dear!  You are part of me; you are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!
+Sorrow shall not touch you when you are all mine, your joys shall be my
+joys!  And--beloved, my children shall be your children!"
+
+With a sudden movement Leonie wrenched herself from his arms and on to
+her feet, whilst a driving cloud surrounded them, and a growl of
+thunder came over from Lundy Island way.
+
+"Love you!" cried the girl.  "Yes!  I love you, if that is the right
+word to describe what it is I have in my heart for you.  No! don't
+touch me!  Listen, I would live for you, _die_ for you in love.  Pain
+through you would be joy, joy through you would be heaven."
+
+She clasped her hands to her breast, then threw them out towards him,
+palm uppermost, in a wonderful gesture of passionate surrender, but her
+face was terrible to see, with eyes like burned out fires, and great
+smears of blood across her mouth and cheek.
+
+"All that I have for you and more--oh! much more--but--I--I cannot
+marry you!"
+
+The glass went down with a little clatter upon the coldest of life's
+cold marble slabs as Jan Cuxson, grasping the girl's arms, pulled her
+roughly towards him.
+
+That he had caught the arm right on the lacerated wound he had no idea
+as he stood looking down into the eyes which were on a level with the
+top button, of his coat.
+
+"Beloved! beloved!  You are tired, distraught!  You don't know what you
+are saying!  You are to go straight home and sleep, for _hours_, then
+come out refreshed and gloriously happy to meet me where and when you
+like!  And we will fix everything down to the very smallest detail, oh!
+dear heart, think of it! and this day week we will sail for India!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+  "That day is a day of wrath--a day of clouds
+  and thick darkness."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"India!" repeated Leonie, "India!"
+
+She flung round towards the sea, standing on the very edge of the
+cliff, the violence of the wind against her the only barrier between
+her and certain death.
+
+"Tell me," she cried, pointing to the heaving, raging mass of waters
+with a hand above which shone dully a blood-soaked bandage.  "Tell me
+what I did to myself down there just now.  I awoke in a different place
+from which I went to sleep.  I had no--I am cut and bruised.  Terrible
+things happen wherever I am--they follow me.  I woke one night in a
+pitch dark room and saw two green eyes staring at me from the wall.
+They were my eyes--reflected in a looking-glass--_mine_--they shine at
+night like a cat's--and there's a voice calling--often.  Oh!  I tell
+you I'm haunted, bewitched, _cursed_!"
+
+"Come to me, beloved."
+
+She turned and went like a child into the outstretched arms, and he,
+having wet his handkerchief on the mist-damped grass, bent the weary
+head back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains from
+the despairing face.
+
+"You walk in your sleep, Leonie, by reason of the workings of an
+overwrought brain, that is all.  India is the problem, and your ayah is
+the answer.  _I_ think she frightened you somehow, made some deep
+impression on you, on your baby brain, and we are going to India to
+find her.  It's very simple, dear, once find the cause we can easily
+find the remedy, and it will be much better if you come with me.  By
+the way, who gave you that cat's-eye?"
+
+He had made a slip.
+
+"When did you see it?" answered Leonie quickly, "I never showed it to
+you!  Were--were you down _there_ near me, _before_ you called?"
+
+"No," steadily lied the man, "but the thing slipped through your blouse
+one day--it's a brute.  Who gave it to you?"
+
+"My ayah!  Do you know, I think you are quite wrong about her.  Auntie
+says Mother told her that she nearly broke her heart when I left India,
+seventeen years ago, and she writes to me regularly every three months.
+Only last week I had a letter from----"
+
+"Do you speak Hindustani?" interrupted Cuxson abruptly, with a frown on
+his face.
+
+"Not a word!"
+
+"Or Sanskrit?"
+
+"Oh! no, neither, but the letters are in English, evidently written by
+one of those letter writers, who get so much for each letter they write
+for the illiterate poor.  And in every one she says how she loves me
+and longs for my return, and although she is very happy in the service
+of some Ranee in the north of India, she wants to give it up and come
+to me."
+
+There was a pause, broken by the nearing thunder and the crash of the
+waves against the cliffs.
+
+"Don't let's worry about that yet, dear, as everything is settled
+splendidly and----"
+
+But Leonie pulled away and stood facing him with her hands in his
+against his heart.
+
+"Do you really _love_ me?"
+
+The whisper was almost lost in the tumult of the breakers beneath.
+
+"_Love_ you, Leonie, _love_ you!"
+
+"What would you _forgive_ me through love?"
+
+"_Forgive_ you!  Everything!  Dishonour could not touch you, and
+everything else I should forgive!"
+
+Leonie tried to speak as she looked past him to the little green track
+between the downs which led to the world, and all it contained for her;
+and he, obtuse male, content in the plans he had mapped out entirely to
+his own satisfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl's consent to
+the programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across her
+face in capital letters.
+
+"Tell me that you will be content, dear.  I'm rich enough, but nothing
+compared with--oh! tell me, what do you like--what do you want--what do
+you _really_ care for!"
+
+She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day had
+been born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.
+
+Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves against
+the cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier,
+retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.
+
+"What do I want, O Man whom I love?  I want a white house within high,
+white walls, on the edge of the sea.  I want my arms full of
+children--yours and mine.  I want love, oh! love and yet more love,
+that is what I want!"
+
+The man twisted her round and held her at arms' length, her heels
+within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her
+hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his
+shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and
+silken caress.
+
+Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped
+off the earth into nothingness.
+
+But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let
+go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.
+
+You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to
+keep your word--just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.
+
+Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she
+would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey
+sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a
+marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy
+little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.
+
+"Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?" said Jan Cuxson, exulting
+in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and
+actually safe from the depths beneath.  "And that is what I am going to
+give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you
+will put into my hands.  Oh! Leonie, my love----"
+
+And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her
+go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking
+point.
+
+What a wooing!
+
+The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the trees
+bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in
+huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and
+Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.
+
+How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and
+dishevelled.
+
+Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved,
+whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay
+therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning
+rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their
+heads.
+
+She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.
+
+Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove
+where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but
+a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and
+steadied.
+
+"I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!"
+
+She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her
+on her feet.
+
+"Don't touch me, Jan, don't come near me, because I--because----"
+
+And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into
+a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands
+on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very
+gently said one word.
+
+"Because?"
+
+"Because," and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouth
+twitching, her shoulders shaking, "because I am to be married _to-day_
+at noon!"
+
+"To-_day_! but you said----"
+
+"I lied."
+
+"You lied--to _me_!"
+
+She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in a
+trap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.
+
+"Why--_lie_?"
+
+"Why?" her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her hell and fate.
+"Why?--because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted to
+cheat life out of one month of happiness.  And I have had it--I have
+had it--and I love you----"
+
+She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down,
+clenched against her breast.  "I love you, _God_ hear me, I _love_ you!"
+
+And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled away
+through the lash of the blinding storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+  "The lighted end of a torch may be turned towards the
+  ground, but the flames still point upwards."--_The Satakas_.
+
+
+The church was simply packed!
+
+The lucky ones, almost all women, wedged tight and fast, crushed their
+beautiful clothes against their neighbours' lovely raiment in the pews.
+
+The unlucky ones stood in rows in the side aisles, just as their
+commoner sisters stand in rows upon the pavement edge to watch some
+passing show.
+
+Some, less hindered by superfluous adipose tissue, had managed to seat
+themselves upon the tomb of one Sir William de Tracy, who had one time
+unduly concerned himself in the murder of a certain Thomas a Becket.
+
+Indeed he built this church in atonement for his unseemly conduct,
+though something seems to have gone agley in the architectural penance,
+as the ghost of Sir William is to be met o' nights upon the sands of
+Woolacombe--so 'tis said.
+
+Some of the still younger fry among the spectators, I mean worshippers
+in this solemn ceremony, clasped the heads in effigy of dead squire, or
+dame, or knight, in order to get the necessary purchase for the task of
+pulling themselves up for just one second in the supreme attempt to
+catch a glimpse of the principals in the parade.
+
+Except for the setting of this beautiful house of God it might have
+been an _entr'acte_ at some theatrical first night; same comments upon
+actors and audience; same criticism upon dress and morals; same yawning
+and fidgeting.
+
+What _had_ they not suffered and sacrificed to flatter the vulgar old
+millionaire!  Anyway they expected a good deal in return for the
+excruciating journey down by rail or car, the whole day lost out of the
+season in London town, _and_ the wedding present.
+
+Unless you own the genuine thing in rank or reputation, how
+_frightfully_ difficult it is to send an astute vulgar old millionaire
+the one present which will open his doors to you.
+
+If you do own the genuine thing, an electro-plated toast-rack will be
+all-sufficient.  If you _don't_, well it's simply no good worrying
+around the bottom rung of the ladder which he has climbed, and from the
+top of which he sits making faces of derision at you.
+
+The principal performers had just disappeared into the vestry as the
+old clock chimed twelve, and Jan Cuxson, swinging back the churchyard
+gate, strode up the narrow tomb-lined path to the church door.
+
+Every woman turned to look at him as he passed.
+
+"Look at 'e now, Mrs. Ovey!  He be staying with me.  Did 'ee iver zee
+sich a butivul face.  Jist like a picture.  Sit 'ee still, young
+Gracie, an' doan 'ee walk over thikee graves, now!  I tell 'ee 'e'd
+make a proper bridegroom, 'e wud!"
+
+"Iss, I reckon!  'Er 'av done mighty fine fer 'erself, 'er 'ave; Mrs.
+Tucker tol' me all 'bout 'un, but 'er be terr'ble young, b'ain't 'er,
+for the likes of thikee ol' man?"
+
+The country women patted and pulled at their best clothes, and turned
+their sweet, slightly bronzed faces, with skins like satin, up to the
+blazing sun.
+
+"Iss, vrai! that 'er be Mrs. Pugsley!  But did 'ee iver zee the likes
+on they ther zatins an' laces an' juels they vine wimen be wearin'?"
+
+"Iss! an' luk at th' ol' paint an' stuff ther be ol over ther vaces?
+Dear, dear now, ther lips be terr'ble raid, b'ain't 'un?  Luks lik'
+they'd bin stealin' cherries!  An' ther eyes be terr'ble black!  Luks
+lik' the'd bin fightin' with ther 'usbands."
+
+Silence fell, during which sweet music stole through the church windows
+to fall like a benison upon the charming simple folk who, by their
+courtesy and gentleness, make Devon such a blissful county to dwell in.
+
+"Can't think, now," suddenly remarked Mrs. Ovey, "w'y thikee young lady
+'av chose Mortehoe Church fer 'er weddin'!"
+
+"I've year'd tell that 'er vather be related to zum lord 'oo 'elped
+kill some ol' parson, yers an' yers gone by!  Gracie! now wat be th'
+ol' man's name now that taicher tol 'ee 'bout?"
+
+"Tracey!"
+
+"Iss, iss!  I've year'd tell 'e be buried zumwher yer 'bouts, an' th'
+ol' bridegroom be proper zet to be married down yer!"
+
+"After th' weddin'," continued Mrs. Ovey, supplying information, "all
+th' vine volks be goin' on to Lay Hotel vur summat t' ate.  Arter that
+they tu be goin' vor 'oneymun over ta 'ardland in li'le ol' 'ouze.
+Poor li'le lady, an' th' ouze they be goin' to be so small ther b'ain't
+no room vur zervants nor nothin'!"
+
+"My now, Mrs. Ovey, but that young feller be proper 'ansom, b'ain't 'e
+now?  I reckon it be a pity that 'er 'adn't zeen 'im befor 'er vixed up
+with old 'un.  I remember when Bill was courtin' me, 'ow----"
+
+And so on and so forth, whilst inside the "vine wimen" from London Town
+made comments after their own kind.
+
+"Some women have all the luck," remarked an enamelled dame, whose
+bridge and dressmakers' debts were on a par with those of her three
+daughters who had safely, oh! quite, but most unsuccessfully survived
+many seasons, "I wonder how Susie managed it?  Gawky young miss, isn't
+she?  Just out of school.  Um--um--um!"
+
+"_Really! is_ she!  Strange in her manner--you don't mean it--oh! of
+_course_ not, dearest!  _Fancy_! hates society, swims at night, walks
+ten miles a day--yes, of course! not quite cosmos, what d'you call
+it--um--um--um?"
+
+"Miraud Soeurs, I believe--yes--did you like that draped effect?  I
+suppose he did--poor old Susie's up to her eyes in debt!  Didn't the
+happy bride look ghastly?  Wonder how she came by the accident--and
+what it was--and means--um--um--um!"
+
+"Yes! _very_, in a bizarre way.  I'm damned sorry for her.  Did you
+hear about the girl in the shop basement?--heavy!  I should think
+so--put the screw on what?--hear the bride's settlement is simply
+enormous--um--um--um!"
+
+And as they gossiped and criticised, tearing each other to pieces
+without zest, having already done it so often that their minds
+resembled rows of backyards piled with the rags and bones of their
+mutual enemies--or so-called friends--the organ played softly, and the
+sun through the stained glass flung dazzling lozenges of colour upon
+the tiles and pillars.
+
+Then came that unmistakable rustle of anticipation, followed by the
+satisfied sigh of those who have patiently waited either for the
+hoisting of the black flag upon the prison wall, or the appearance of a
+popular bride in the doorway of the church.
+
+There was a shimmer of white and silver, and a strenuous tussle in the
+pews and aisles as the stereotyped march from "Lohengrin" crashed
+through the little church.
+
+Jan Cuxson made one step backwards, and stopped as his heel struck
+against the wall, then stepped forward and stood right in the path of
+the bridal party.
+
+Straight down they came without a halt; gushing women who did not know
+her darted forward to shower the bride with their unwanted
+congratulations, hesitated and darted back with self-conscious giggles
+as they met the stony, unresponsive eyes in the death-white face.
+
+Very slowly she passed, with the fingers of one hand resting on the arm
+of the corpulent, self-satisfied man beside her; the other arm,
+bandaged from elbow to wrist, was held in a sling across her breast,
+the fingers nearly touching the one jewel she wore, a sleepy cat's-eye
+hanging from a slender golden chain.
+
+The happy bride was looking straight in front, down the road to
+Calvary, where stood a man outlined against the burst of light flooding
+through the door.
+
+She neither slowed nor hastened as she passed through the lane of
+twitching mouths and popping eyes and approached him; then she stood
+quite still, a gleaming, living statue in shimmering satin and lace,
+and removing her hand from her husband's arm, laid it with a little
+gracious gesture on Jan Cuxson's, and he, bending low, gently kissed it.
+
+An artist made the record lightning sketch of his life when in a few
+lines he drew the dignity, the despair, and the tenderness of the
+girl's face, upon whose brow and above whose heart rested weirdly two
+great crimson stains flung by the sun through the coloured windows.
+
+For one brief second her moonlit eyes looked straight into the steady
+grey ones; then the heavy lids sank slowly, and the faintest rose
+colour swept from brow to chin, causing the artist to murmur to
+himself, "The ice floes are breaking!" as, like the gallant gentleman
+he was, he tore the sketch slowly across and across.
+
+Two little words had been whispered loud enough to reach the ears
+beneath the orange blossom.
+
+"I forgive!"
+
+When he had said it Leonie once more laid her hand upon her irate
+husband's arm, and passed out into the sun to be met with the shrill
+cheers of the children who flung basketsful of wild flowers upon the
+bridal path, and the church was filled with a sound like a swarm of
+startled bees.
+
+"Um--um--um!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+  "Many waters cannot quench love;
+  neither can floods drown it."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+The girl kicked aside the jumble of clothes littering the cabin floor,
+and bending her head squatted upon the bunk, and incidentally, and quite
+indifferently, upon a crepe-de-Chine blouse which badly needed washing,
+and casually watched her mother who was scrabbling through a cabin trunk
+in a manner reminiscent of a terrier ratting in a hedge.
+
+"Why on earth couldn't you stay on deck?" demanded the mother angrily, as
+she lifted the transformation from her brow and heaved it on to the upper
+berth, thereby unashamedly exposing a head not unlike a gorse common
+devastated by fire.
+
+"I can't find that--oh! here it is.  What a state it's in.  D'you think
+the Chinese man could iron it?"
+
+_That_ was one of those hybrid negliges which can serve its turn as a
+bath gown, a bedroom wrap, or, covered with a genuine native-made tinsel
+shawl (bought at Teneriffe but made in Birmingham), can pass as an
+evening gown in the tropics.  The cabin was on one of the liners which,
+calling at odd places like Genoa, Naples, Algiers, etc., allows you to
+pick up letters brought by the mail boat to Port Said.  The inhabitants
+of the inner, double berthed black hole, called by courtesy a cabin, were
+the mother and her last unmarried daughter who lived in Surbiton.
+
+The mother had successfully acquired a reputation as a world-wide
+traveller, and husbands for her numerous daughters amounting to a net
+total of six, by dint of travelling the latter backwards and forwards
+over those heartbreaking routes which suffer from two weeks or more of
+going without a break.
+
+Try from Aden to Sydney with one break at Colombo, and the above long and
+somewhat involved paragraph will be easily understood.
+
+"I say, mater, guess who gave me these--have one?"
+
+Mater sat back on her heels, bumping her head against the washstand,
+plucked a Simon Artz from its cardboard nest, lit it, and emitted volumes
+of smoke from mouth, and nostrils, until the cabin resembled the
+smoking-room of any West End ladies' club.
+
+"Oh! don't ask silly questions, it's too hot!  Who?"
+
+"The Grizzly Bear!"
+
+"_No_!"
+
+"He _did_!  He'd been ashore!"
+
+"_No_!"
+
+"Yes!  I'd been talking to him, and had just turned to say something to
+the Babe when he slipped down the gangway.  I do wish we weren't so hard
+up.  It's an awful rag going ashore.  He came back an hour ago, found a
+letter, and has been sitting up and taking notice ever since.  It was a
+man's handwriting, I saw the envelope!"
+
+Mater flung everything pell-mell into the trunk, pushed it back with the
+aid of her daughter's heels under the berth, bent her head and sat down
+beside her.
+
+"He looked so different that I actually asked him for a cigarette, and he
+gave me the box, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Tomlinson-Tomlinson's
+hateful little brat--you know--Muriel--we should have had a good long
+talk.  The little wretch actually sat on the arm of his chair; it's
+extraordinary how he lets children worry him."
+
+"Yes! dear Lady de Smythe has christened him the wet nurse!"
+
+Which leaves no doubt whatever that some time, somewhere the dear lady
+had been clawed by the grizzly.
+
+"Why don't you get into your black sequin to-night!  It'll be frightfully
+hot going down the Canal, and you can slip on the scarf if you go up on
+the boat deck, as everyone does the first time they go through the Suez."
+
+"Yes!  I might--the blue _does_ want ironing!" replied the daughter,
+taking a hand in that weird game of "make-believe" which the majority of
+women play between themselves.  For what ultimate benefit it is
+impossible to say, since from the moment the cards are shuffled they
+know, to a nicety, the tricks and manoeuvres of each player.
+
+Anyway the sequin was fished out from somewhere, and shaken and pulled
+this way and that.
+
+It consisted of a skirt of a kind, a waistbelt, two shoulder straps, and
+a big jet butterfly poised just where, for the sake of decency, it was
+necessary, and as a toilette allied with the boat deck would doubtless
+prove most attractive to the man who was not in search of a wife.
+
+The man it was intended to subjugate, meanwhile, was lying full length on
+his deck chair intent upon a letter, oblivious of the noise of the
+harbour and the racket necessary to the boat's imminent departure.
+
+Jan Cuxson had read the letter five times and was just starting on it for
+the sixth, subconsciously congratulating himself on his foresight, or
+horse sense, which you will.
+
+His cabin was like nothing on earth, and in it, upon the outer edge of a
+dead maelstrom of his entire wardrobe, stood John Smith, cabin steward.
+
+John Smith is not his name, but who does not know and bless him if they
+have ever travelled on this particular boat.
+
+He has a big, very black mole on the extreme tip of his nose, and is the
+cheeriest, most optimistic soul on the ocean wave, yea! even those
+out-size waves in the Bay at its worst.
+
+After the first lightning perusal of the God-sped letter, Jan Cuxson had
+given divers urgent orders for as much as possible of his gear in the
+hold to be thrown ashore.
+
+Imagine it, and the boat almost due to sail!
+
+He had then rushed to his cabin and initiated the maelstrom, until common
+sense had smitten him between the love-fogged eyes of his desire;
+whereupon he had heaved a huge sigh of utter contentment, propped himself
+against the door for the second perusal, rung the bell, countermanded all
+he had ordered, and left John Smith to it.
+
+He had pulled the letter out of its envelope, growled at a vendor of
+Egyptian wares, and turned with a whole-hearted smile at the sound of a
+small voice.
+
+"Is 'oo velly unhappy, Mr. Bear?"
+
+The man did not know that he had become the object of that loathsome
+habit of nicknaming all and sundry which a certain clique on every boat
+consider so smart.
+
+"I'm the happiest man on earth--water, I mean, little one.  Yes! come
+along up--and why Mr. Bear?"
+
+Followed a scramble, a gurgle, and arranging of infinitesimal frills.
+
+"Mummie calls 'oo Mr. Grizzly Bear because you're cwoss!  Mrs.
+Tom--Tom--li'son says Mummie's cwoss 'cos 'oo wouldn't take the buns she
+wanted 'oo too.  Why didn't 'oo take the buns--buns nice, I fink!"
+
+An agitated nurse swooped down at this crucial moment and recovered that
+which she had lost, leaving the man laughing aloud to the astonishment of
+all near him.
+
+_Laugh_!  Why he had not laughed since he had left Mortehoe Church,
+neither had he smiled at any time upon the boat, or upon anybody except
+the children; and now he laughed, all on account of an atrocious scrawl
+on many sheets of thin paper which he started once more to read.
+
+
+"I hope," ran the scrawl of the man for whom Cuxson had fagged at Harrow,
+"that this catches you at Port Said, because"--followed a badly expressed
+bit of business.  "London's had the shock of many seasons, by the way.
+You know that old brute, Pickled Walnuts, well I won't say anything about
+the old scallawag because he's dead.  Well! he married the other day,
+you'd sailed I think, I didn't go to the wedding.  Did you know Susan,
+old Hetth, V.C.'s sister by marriage--up to her eyes in debt--sold her
+niece to pay them, I suppose, to the old millionaire--wonder what hold
+she had on the girl.
+
+"Anyway they went off somewhere in Devon for the honeymoon, God help her.
+It seems that she had had an accident the night before, or something, and
+fainted, or something, directly after dinner--the wedding dinner, I mean.
+Did you ever learn composition on the Hill?  I _didn't_!
+
+"The woman who looks after the cottage put Lady Hickle to bed and tucked
+her up; placed a bottle of port in--all came out at the inquest--old
+Hickle's room, and left the house.  Next thing, about two o'clock in the
+morning, a shepherd or something saw a blaze and went to look.  Cottage
+on fire, old Hickle burnt to a cinder, and the girl hauled out of bed
+just in time, gibbering in French or something in panic I suppose.
+
+"The charwoman thinks the curtains caught fire in the candle, and that
+the port had made the old man sleep heavily and that he was suffocated by
+the smoke.
+
+"Full moon, too.  What a sight it must have been!  Place burned to the
+ground.
+
+"I believe Lady Hickle is quite a girl and very beautiful--and is
+starting on a tour round the world or something--she'll get most of his
+millions, I believe.  By the way, who _do_ you think have fixed it up.
+Dear old Bumble and Diana Lytham.  Heaven be good to him.  Your turn
+next, old boy!  Well she'll be darned lucky who gets you, see how well I
+trained you, d'you remember, etc., etc."
+
+
+The man sat still for some long time, then suddenly sprang to his feet
+and went aft.
+
+The dressing bugle had sounded but he had not heard; the dinner bugle had
+sounded and still he had not heard, as he stood at the stern watching the
+swirling wash of the slow-moving boat.
+
+"Full moon, too!  She was hauled from her bed gibbering in French or
+something."
+
+He quoted the words, and crushed the letter savagely in his hands, for
+even in the fullness of his joy he remembered Leonie's words, "Terrible
+things happen wherever I am--they follow me."  But in the greatness of
+his love he figuratively shrugged his shoulders, gathered his beloved
+into the safe haven of his arms, and closed the moonlit eyes with kisses.
+
+Whilst a jet butterfly fluttered in vain over a very decollete expanse
+which covered a heart agitated by rage and disappointment on the boat
+deck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+  "And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Leonie and her aunt were having tea at the Ladies' Union Club, of which
+the latter was almost an original member.
+
+You know the place where, arriving on foot or with the trail of the
+omnibus upon you in the shape of a two-penny ticket grasped tightly in
+your right hand, you receive a stony stare as welcome from the hall
+porter, and one of dead fish glassiness from the rest of the staff.
+
+There is a certain air of geniality diffused around a taxi arrival, but
+a _car_!--two or eight cylinder--owned, borrowed, or stolen, well!
+there you win in honours, no matter _what_ kind of private address you
+camouflage with that of your club.
+
+Having cleared a way across the tobacco-laden atmosphere, through which
+can be spied ladies, young and old, inhaling and exhaling with more
+vigour than grace, they had ensconced themselves in the seat for two
+which lies isolated from the jumble of chairs and couches.
+
+That seat having the advantage of isolation, your conversation does not
+gladden the ears of your neighbour nor theirs yours.
+
+You know what that is like--if you don't, well, it's the kind that if
+written would read in italics: _Ayah--kitmutgar--pukka--chotar
+hazri--syce_, with reference, ultra-distinct and emphatic, to
+_Government House_, _Simla_, and my dear old friend, _General
+Methuselah_.
+
+Just those little British odds-and-ends which go to the ruling, more or
+less, of the land of the peacock.  Add to that the general, what shall
+I say, touch-and-go attire of the majority of the members.  You know
+what it is like.
+
+Lace collars over reconstructed tailor-mades; pseudo-suede gloves,
+chiffon scarfs, generally ropey and heliotrope of hue; odd-coloured
+jerseys affiliated to odd-cut skirts, plus jangling oriental bracelets
+and chains, and mix that with a few puckered, leather-hued countenances
+and you get the club's principal ingredient.
+
+Anglo-Indian.
+
+Anyway the place is conveniently situated, and quite bearable if you
+can put up with the waiter or the somewhat overdecorated and
+ever-changing waitress telling you, in front of your guest, that you
+"can only 'ave cakes and bread-un-butter forrer shilling,
+every-think-else-is extra."
+
+Cheery, when you may have been doing your best to make an impression!
+
+Of course every member (if she ever gets as far as this) of every
+ladies' club will here draw her pharisaical skirts about her and edge
+nearer to her neighbour.
+
+"_Did_ you read this"--quotes--"_awfully_ good, isn't it?  Of course
+it's meant for the Imperatrix--the Toga--the Ninth Century--the Spook."
+
+It _isn't_!
+
+It's just typical.
+
+Is there any one thing in any one ladies' club to differentiate it from
+its sister establishment--especially in the canteen?
+
+I will pay one year's town subscription to any woman knowing, of
+course, the difference between husks and food, who will honestly
+declare that her heart has _not_ plumped to her boots after a
+spur-on-the-moment invitation to a _man_ to lunch or dine at her club.
+
+By spur-on-the-moment I mean when she has not had the time to negotiate
+with the cook, via the head waiter.
+
+You do not need the menu to tell you that plaice is here your portion;
+or a lightning glance to ascertain that the exact number of your prunes
+is six, and that of your guest half a dozen; or just a sip of your
+coffee--well! there you begin to talk feverishly and to press liqueurs
+and cigarettes upon the suffering guest.
+
+But to come back to the club tea-room.
+
+"My dear," Susan Hetth was saying, jangling with the best, and pitching
+her voice so that it literally, though slangily, beat the band, "I
+really think, considering your position and recent bereavement, that
+you _should_ wear----"
+
+"Please be quiet, Auntie," said Leonie, who in a grey and pale mauve
+confection looked like a field of statice against a pearl-grey sky.  "I
+came here to talk about you, not clothes.  You see I want to tell you
+how I have settled things before I sail."
+
+Her aunt fretted with a teaspoon, and spoke in the absurd peevish way
+which had been so attractive at seventeen.
+
+"For the last time, Leonie, I want you to listen to me!"
+
+"Other way round, Auntie," said Leonie, who had chosen the club, of all
+places, for a last _tete-a-tete_ with her relation, in the hope that
+the presence of others would serve as a dam to the flood of tears which
+had streamed almost unceasingly during the last month.
+
+"But it's absurd, idiotic----"
+
+"Auntie, dear, we've been through all that a hundred times, and a
+hundred million times more won't make me change.  I will _not_ touch a
+penny of Sir Walter's money----"
+
+"Oh!  Leonie, your _husband_!"
+
+"Not my husband in any sense at all, except for the awful name.
+Why"--and she spoke with sweet intense enthusiasm--"do you know they
+are going to build a house in Devon for blind babies out of my marriage
+settlement, and endow it, and have resident teachers--think of it----"
+
+Leonie broke off to manipulate the tea-things to the rhythm of a
+one-step.
+
+"And all the rest of the money, Leonie, oh! it's scandalous!"
+
+"Oh, that!" said Leonie, manoeuvring the milk out of a broken milk-jug.
+"Except for Sir Walter's special bequests, it all goes back to the
+family.  They've almost all come to see me at the hotel, such honest,
+nice people; and oh! so grateful.  Mrs. Sam Hickle is moving to Balham
+from the Waterloo Road to open a fruit shop, she brought me a huge
+basket of vegetables, carried it into my room herself; and a young Bert
+Hickle, who has a whelk-barrow in the Borough, brought me a whole
+turbot which had soaked through its newspaper wrapping.  He gave it to
+the page-boy to carry, and I _do_ wish you had seen their faces when
+the tail suddenly burst through, just as the page-boy was gingerly
+laying it down on a most appropriate resting-place, a marble consol."
+
+Leonie laughed just as the music stopped, a ringing, happy laugh which
+caused people to stare and then nudge, or kick each other
+surreptitiously as they recognised her.
+
+"It's all settled about you, Auntiekins.  I'm paying your debts, which
+aren't so terrific, only foolish, and giving you five hundred pounds to
+go on with.  That, with your own income, will be all right if only you
+will live in the country instead of hanging on to the edge of a society
+which doesn't want you.  Still, you do exactly as you like, dear, only
+remember that I shall only have just enough to live on when I've got
+through the thousand pounds, and don't run up any more debts."
+
+"Why not _invest_ the thousand, Leonie, _sensibly_."  Susan Hetth's
+voice was dull, choked doubtlessly by the dust of her castle ruins.
+
+"I've got to go to India!"
+
+"Why, for goodness sake?"
+
+"I don't know, Auntie, I've simply got to go!"
+
+"How silly," said Auntie, as she forced a cigarette inartistically into
+a holder, adding abruptly, as her commonplace mind jumped at a
+commonplace loop-hole, "Where is Jan Cuxson?  I should think----"
+
+Leonie answered quickly, breaking her aunt's words.
+
+"I have no idea!  I haven't heard from him since he left England."
+
+"Huh!" said Susan Hetth, putting up an absolute smoke screen, "and what
+will you do after the money is spent, pray?"
+
+Leonie stared wide-eyed into the tobacco haze.  "That," she said
+slowly, "is on the knees of the gods!"
+
+Talking being temporarily suspended by the band in the death throes of
+the overture to Zampa, the two women sat silent; one frantically trying
+to solve financial problems, the other with her head a little on one
+side as though trying to catch the thread of some conversation.
+
+A strange thing happened as the band stopped.
+
+Leonie rose quite suddenly, with a half-eaten cake half-way to her
+mouth.
+
+"I must go!" she said quite flatly, placing the cake on a plate and
+looking at her aunt without seeing her.
+
+"_Go_!" shrilled Susan Hetth, putting her fourth cup of tea down with
+an irritated slam.  "Where on earth _to_?"
+
+But Leonie turned and walked away with never a word of explanation, and
+her aunt, with the thrifty side of her plebeian soul uppermost, turned
+to the task of getting through as much as possible of what was left of
+the two teas for which two shillings had been paid.
+
+The porter looked hard at Leonie when she asked for a taxi, hesitated
+for a moment, looked hard again, and refrained from putting the
+question hovering on his tongue.
+
+"Seemed quite dazed like," he explained later to his wife in Camberwell
+as she juggled with sausages, "pale as death, with a kind of funny look
+round her eyes!"
+
+"To the British Museum," Leonie said through the window as the taxi
+door closed, and the funny look round her eyes deepened into a line of
+perplexity between the eyebrows, as the cab bore her swiftly to her
+destination and her destiny.
+
+She walked swiftly up the steps to the institution she was visiting for
+the first time, and through the glass swing doors, just as though she
+was hurrying to an appointment; she turned, without hesitating, sharply
+to the left up the long flight of stairs, passed through the rooms
+filled with relics of Rome found in Britain, and stopped.
+
+Just for a second she put the palm of her ungloved hand against her
+forehead, sighed quickly, with her head bent forward, then passed
+through the doorway, turned to the left, stopped and said "Yes?"
+
+And the man, in faultless western clothes save for the white turban
+which with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze face, with a
+look of satisfaction in the dark eyes, salaamed before the beautiful
+woman who had looked at him questioningly.
+
+"Allow me!" he said simply, bending to pick up the glove she had
+dropped, the smile of satisfaction deepening as he looked at her again.
+
+She had turned from him, and stock-still was staring into the glass
+case which lined the wall.
+
+Closer she pressed, until her nose, flattened against the glass looked
+like a white cherry.
+
+"Kali," she read, "Kali, the Goddess of Death.  I thought--I----"
+
+Lower she leant to look at the square stone image numbered thirty-seven.
+
+High breasted, squatting on her crossed legs, garlanded with skulls,
+with five hands, holding a sword, a thunderbolt, a skull, a snake, a
+cup, and the other two raised in blessing, the goddess leers at you
+like a very old woman from behind the glass.
+
+Leonie turned swiftly to find herself alone; and the hunted look in her
+gold-flecked eyes deepened to horror as she gathered her skirts about
+her, and fled blindly through the rooms, and down the stairs, and out
+of the building.
+
+Heading straight down Museum Street for Oxford Street, she ran across
+the road at the risk of her neck and the wrath of a taxi-driver; gave
+one terrified backward glance at a law-abiding student from India, who
+was going to his cheery lodgings in Bloomsbury; and fled into the
+tea-rooms which lure you outside with the pretty apple-painted ware in
+the window, and where inside, one beautiful little blonde head shines
+like a field of ripening wheat.
+
+Safe, she crouched down behind the window curtain with her eyes fixed
+unseeingly on the distorted figures of the Java frieze.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE EAST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+  "But when the desire cometh,
+  it is a tree of life."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+The first-class passengers, leastways the passengers travelling first
+class, lay stretched out side by side, one sex to starboard, t'other to
+port, divided, however, more by the fear of the eyes of the other sex,
+than by any hatch piled with chairs, or ship rule pinned upon the
+notice-board, and signed by the chief.
+
+Surely the hours of the tropical nights passed in sleep on deck are
+those in which we should return thanks for lacking the gift of seeing
+ourselves as the officer going on, or coming off watch, the fugitive
+apprentice, or some stray passenger see us.
+
+Human chrysalis, wrapt in the cocoon of sheet or unsightly night
+attire, with starboard boudoir cap awry, exposing the steel cracker or
+the lanky lock; unsightly pedal extremities peeping from the unfeminine
+pyjama; ruby lips, uncarmined, ajar; whilst to port like rocks from the
+ocean, unshaven chins rise unrebuked from blanket billows, and pyjama
+button and buttonhole play touch across the unseemly, unrestrained and
+unconfined masculine torso.
+
+It was one of those insufferably hot nights you get sometimes as you
+turn into the Hoogli, when the smell of the land comes in sickening
+wafts, and the enchantment of the East is considerably lessened in your
+opinion by the oppression of the atmosphere.
+
+You are going up the Hoogli! you are passing the Sunderbunds! you can
+almost see the tigers squatting in rows at the water's edge! it is the
+East! it is India!--also it is infernally hot, and having retired to
+your cabin to disrobe, you anathemise your stable companion who has
+been likewise inspired; curse your overworked cabin steward who has
+heaved your bedding on to the wrong site; re-arrange everything and bed
+down.
+
+Everyone was asleep when the light of the full moon caused a subdued
+lustre under the awnings, and a greenish light in Leonie's wide-open,
+staring eyes, as she suddenly swung herself over the side of her bunk
+and slid unhurt to the floor.
+
+She made an arresting picture as she stood listening intently, her
+flimsy garment falling away from her shoulders, leaving the slender
+white back bare to the waist, while she held handfuls of the
+transparent stuff crushed against her breast, upon which lay a jewel
+hung from a gold chain.
+
+Her feet were bare, her arms were bare, and her tawny mass of hair hung
+in two thick scented plaits to her dimpled knees; and she repeated some
+words over and over again like one insane or delirious.
+
+"_Ham abhi ate hai--ham abhi ate hai_."
+
+Which being translated means "I come--I come."
+
+Without the slightest hesitation she opened the door of No. 1
+state-room, which she had had to herself after Port Said, and which, as
+anyone who has travelled on this particular boat will know, gives on to
+the dining saloon; passed swiftly along the narrow passage past the
+notice board and the head steward's cabin, and stood among the human
+cocoons on deck.
+
+For a moment she paused irresolute, turned, and swiftly mounted the
+companion-way to the bridge deck, her bare feet making no sound, her
+beautiful body shining like ivory through the flimsy garment she held
+gathered to her breast.
+
+Oh! well for her was it that the ship slept, and that the awnings made
+it almost impossible for those on the bridge to see what took place on
+the deck.
+
+Though a report of sleep-walking on board would only have served to
+broaden the lines of laughter in the chief officer's mercurial soul,
+and deepen the lines of cynicism around the second officer's cynical
+mouth when the one relieved the other on the bridge at the matutinal
+hour of four a.m.
+
+And very well for Leonie was it that the captain had forbidden sleeping
+on his deck, and that the high caste native who had come aboard at
+Colombo was sitting on the port side as she approached.
+
+Owing to his high caste, and the purity of his habits, the young native
+had passed the days apart from his fellow-passengers since he had come
+aboard; and the days left were too few for the white folk to show any
+curiosity concerning the handsome man.
+
+You don't feel curious about anything after almost five weeks
+seafaring; you feel kind of stunned.
+
+Leonie, therefore, had not noticed him particularly as he sat apart
+with his delicate oval face behind a book when she approached, or
+passed his chair; neither had she felt the gentle luminous eyes resting
+upon her from the nape of her sunkissed neck to her slim ankle.
+
+Nor did he now, long after midnight, make any sign when, without
+touching the rails, she came swiftly up the companion-ladder, bending
+her bronze head to miss the edge of the awning; and he made no movement
+as she sped past him, crossed the deck to the starboard rail, and
+putting both hands upon it, swung her body back as you do when you are
+going to vault clear.
+
+No movement of his body, but he gave a jerk of his will-power which
+brought the veins out like whipcord upon his forehead, and drove the
+nails deep into the palms of his hands.
+
+And in response, Leonie's arms slackened.  She stood quite still,
+staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she
+put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat
+sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch
+of the ship would have sent her headlong into the water.
+
+The native's eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils dilated strangely
+as he pitted his will against the force which was impelling her.
+
+He dared not speak, he dared not touch her.  For he knew that one
+moment of recognition, one breath of scandal touching himself and the
+woman he trailed, meant the crumbling of the altar he was building
+stone by stone to his god.
+
+For that reason he had taken the mail instead of the slow boat she had
+chosen, and had thought long before deciding to come aboard, even at
+Colombo.
+
+He was afraid because of the evening she had answered when he called
+her across London to his side, by the image of Kali the Terrible in a
+glass case; afraid that she might recognise him and be on her guard,
+undoing all that he had done in the last year in obedience to the
+mandate of the old priest.
+
+Sleeping Leonie, having descended from her perilous seat, stood for a
+moment with outflung arms, looking across the waters; then turned and
+walked swiftly and softly like a cat, straight up to the man who rose.
+Sweetly she laughed up into his face as she laid one little hand upon
+the great white cloak which swung from his shoulders, unaware that in
+moving her hand her own garment had slipped, and that her beauty lay
+exposed like a lotus bud before his eyes.
+
+She came so close that her bare shoulder touched the fine white linen,
+and the curves of her scarlet lips wet but a fraction of an inch from
+his own; and her whimpered words in the eastern tongue were as a flame
+to an oil well.
+
+"This plant," she murmured, with the light of unholiness in her
+gleaming eyes, "this plant is honey born--at the tip of my tongue
+honey--mayest thou come unto my intent!"
+
+He answered softly in the same sonorous tongue and she swayed towards
+him like a flower.
+
+"About thee with an encompassing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to
+absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
+mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+Where is the dividing line?
+
+What is it that causes the saint suddenly to fling aside his holiness
+and hurl himself headlong to perdition? or the sinner to hurl aside his
+evilness and fling himself headlong into a monastery?
+
+The jogging of memory, mostly, I think.
+
+For what resolutions can not be conceived, and accomplished, or broken
+by the scent of a flower, the touch of a hand, or the feel of a piece
+of stuff.
+
+Love, sudden, overpowering oriental love consumed the man, passion
+scorched his soul, and desire shook him from his dark head to the
+slender feet.
+
+He was awake and the girl was asleep, and craving to set his seal upon
+her in her unconsciousness, he bent towards her until the fierceness of
+his breath disturbed the lacey frill about her breast, bringing to view
+the jewel suspended from a golden chain.
+
+Instantly his joined hands were raised towards his face mechanically in
+prayer, his eyes burned with the fanaticism of his creed, and his face
+became old in knowledge.
+
+The dividing line? the lifted veil?  Nay! nothing but a jewel with the
+form and the colouring of a cat's-eye, which had cunningly winked up at
+him from the secret places of the girl's bosom; so that she returned to
+her cabin with her body unscathed, and her soul on the edge of the
+precipice.
+
+And the most razor-tongued, detested colonel mem-sahib of the line in
+India thanked her stars that the mosquitoes had roused her frantically,
+but just in time, to see the trailing edge of Leonie's indecorous night
+attire disappear through the door.
+
+Aloofness, allied to perfect shoes and silken hose, will find a woman
+more enemies on board than all the pretty faces and frocks in the
+world; and if, in addition, she _can_ heap on such items as a seductive
+face and figure; and if gossip via the newspapers can and _does_ supply
+information as to the contents of her pass-book, plus savoury rumours
+concerning mysterious incidents in her past; well! 'twere better for
+that woman to stop at home, bob her hair, and take to that field of
+literature which is not bound on any side by the hedge of convention.
+
+So it came about that her friends, after stumbling up the gangway at
+the Kidderpore Docks, with handkerchiefs held against their noses to
+protect them from the effluvia wafted from Garden Reach, lifted their
+eyebrows slightly at the frostiness of the adieux between their guest
+and her fellow-passengers.
+
+And no one in the scramble and flurry noticed the elderly pock-marked
+ayah who had been engaged as Leonie's bodywoman as she lifted the hem
+of the mem-sahib's skirt and laid it against her forehead, and touched
+the instep of the high caste native when he passed behind the girl and
+disappeared in the crowd of his countrymen which opened up a way before
+him.
+
+An ayah, who, to the utter astonishment of her friends, had given up
+the high position of head body-woman to a Ranee of the North, in order
+to accept the humble post of ayah to a mem-sahib.
+
+A post she had gained by the baffling methods of the East which bind
+each man's work to that of his neighbour with an unbreakable,
+untraceable chain; and gained too, over the sleek heads of many of her
+sister ayahs, who, armed with countless and phenomenally laudatory
+chits, had squatted patiently for hours in the servants' quarters of
+the bungalow at Alipore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+  "For lo! the winter is past,
+  and the rain is over and gone!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+"That's Lady Hickle!"
+
+The two men turned in their saddles as Leonie went by at a canter near
+the rails.
+
+The raking great waler forging ahead like an engine of destruction was
+kept in check by Leonie, exuberant with health, the knowledge of a
+perfect seat and hands, and that uprush of spirits which an early ride on
+the Maidan brings--to some of us.
+
+"Not _the_ Lady Hickle?"
+
+"The same!"
+
+"Well, I'm damned! she's only a girl, and _what_ a seat!  Chucked the
+millions, too, didn't she?  Having a good time?"
+
+John Thorne frowned as he backed his horse before answering.
+
+"We're great friends," he said shortly, and the other man tapped his
+teeth with his whip.
+
+Thorne hadn't the slightest intention of implanting a snub, as the other
+man knew, knowing him and his most unfortunate manner.
+
+Friends, yes! they were friends, two strong, super-sensitive characters
+drawn in sympathy one to the other; and John Thorne would have liked to
+have been a good deal more than a friend, but he had the sense to realise
+that the only kind of woman he could ever ask to share his rising
+fortune, bad manners, and worse temper, would be of the type designated
+in the short and unromantic word _cow_.
+
+One of those slumbrous, sleek creatures who stand knee deep and content
+in a field of domestic trivialities; ruminate placidly upon the happy
+little events of the past hour; and always find a hedge under which to
+shelter at the first intimation of a storm.
+
+Lucky, lucky cattle who do not know the temperamental ups and downs, the
+mental lights and shadows, the physical and psychological upheavals, or
+the intense joys and griefs of the more highly strung goat.
+
+At that moment Leonie rode back slowly with some friends, and smiled at
+John Thorne.
+
+"No!" Thorne went on meditatively, "no, she's _not_ having a good time.
+I can't quite make it out.  You see, although she was only married for a
+day, the defunct tradesman husband rather overshadows her father's
+splendid career--old Bob Hetth, V.C., you remember.  It _would_ in this
+caste-bound country.  Caste amongst _us_, ye gods!  Then her clothes are
+really lovely, oh! ripping! make Chowringhee confections look as though
+they'd come from the _durzi_ or the Lal Bazaar.  And it seems that she's
+living on her capital, and that her hair curls naturally----"
+
+The other man laughed out loud.
+
+"Oh! you needn't laugh.  Wait until you've been stationed as long as I
+have in Calcutta, then you'll----"
+
+Leonie had turned and was coming up at a gentle trot.
+
+"Gad! isn't she beautiful?" said the newcomer.
+
+"Yes!  I think that's _really_ her trouble," replied Thorne as he moved
+to meet her.
+
+"Good morning, and don't come too near the Devil.  We were out in the fog
+this morning and it has made him as touchy as anything.  Isn't it a
+simply perfect morning!"
+
+For a moment she sat and looked at the funnels and masts swarming the
+placid Hoogli, turned her head as a far-away siren announced the arrival
+of a liner, gave a little sigh as she looked up at a kite sailing
+care-free overhead, and came back to earth with a smile.
+
+"How d'you do," she smiled, upon the introduction of the other man.  "And
+don't come too near the Devil, he's nervy; in fact I think he will burst
+with suppressed energy if I keep him standing longer.  Shall we canter as
+far--oh!----"
+
+"Hell!" finished Thorne after his kind, causing the corners of Leonie's
+beautiful mouth to lift as she raised a reproving finger.
+
+The razor-tongued, most feared and detested colonel mem-sahib of the
+line, in the whole of India, rode up with a seat which would not have
+disgraced the sands of Margate.
+
+Thinking that she might as well share the pig-skin, she had, upon her
+husband attaining his majority, taken a dozen riding lessons somewhere
+near Regent's Park; had hacked irregularly ever since, and still, when
+off her equine guard, talked about a horse's ankles.
+
+"Don't come too near the Devil, Mrs. Hudson, he's _so_ fidgety."
+
+"Nonsense!" brusquely replied the lady as she nodded to the men.  "It's
+you who are fidgety; comes of all your sleep-walking, brain fag or
+whatever you call it; you've--you've inoculated the poor darling," she
+added, clapping her hand on the Devil's hind-quarters.
+
+Thorne made an ineffectual grab as the Devil reared so straight that
+Leonie's face was hidden in the mane, and backed his horse as the waler
+came down with a terrific clatter on the hard ground, scraping the
+colonel mem-sahib's foot as she wheeled about, emitting silly little
+cries, whilst men tore up from all sides with desire to help.
+
+Up again he shot, pawing the air until it seemed that he surely must fall
+backwards, and men and women stared aghast until Leonie, raising her arm,
+brought her whip down between the silky ears.
+
+"Damnation!" said John Thorne as Leonie patted the Devil's neck as he
+danced nervously on one spot.
+
+"Time I took him home," she said.  "The syce?--no!  I daren't give him to
+anyone as he is--oh! good morning----
+
+"Saw your _haute ecole_ stunt, Lady Hickle," burst out a lad who rode a
+fallen star in the shape of a discarded discreditable polo pony.  "Simply
+topping--but the Devil's a nervy demon, you _shouldn't_ ride him--he'll
+get away with you one of these fine days.  What happened?"
+
+"He bumped into my horse, he's not safe to be out amongst us--indeed, he
+is _not_.  Lady Hickle, I have been in Cat----"
+
+The rest was lost in precipitate flight with the colonel mem-sahib's arms
+closely hugging her pony's neck, to the joy and the infinite delight of
+the rest of the spectators.
+
+Unseen, uncouth John Thorne, furious at the scant courtesy shown to the
+lady of his dreams, had brought his whip down heftily, just above the
+mangy tail of the colonel mem's pony.
+
+"I think I'll ride alone, if you don't mind," said Leonie with a ripple
+of suppressed laughter in her voice.
+
+"All the way to Alipore?"
+
+"Oh! it's not far, and I daren't trust the syce, the Devil would simply
+_eat_ him."
+
+The boy sidled in between her and Thorne, to the latter's infinite
+annoyance.
+
+"Are you still keen on the _shikar_ stunt, Lady Hickle?"
+
+He gazed at her adoringly, and she smiled back into the honest, merry
+eyes.
+
+"_Shikar_ stunt?"
+
+"Yes! you remember--Sunderbunds--dak bungalows--_shikari_--wild animals
+in bunches--discomfort and all the rest.  Say yes!  Oh! _do_!" as Leonie
+slowly shook her head,  "It'll be such a rag!  Major and Mrs.
+Talbot--she's a fine shot--you and me, and we've got to get another
+fe--woman 'cos a simply top-hole fellow walked into the club last night,
+who's wonderfully keen on it; we're kind of related, his father was my
+mother's second cousin."
+
+"And the higher the fewer," interposed Thorne, as Leonie laughed.  "And
+what's the top-hole fellow's name?"
+
+The youngster eyed the elder man with disapproval.
+
+"Name--coming brain specialist--setting the old fossils in Harley Street
+by the ears--forgotten more than they've ever learned--name--why, Jan
+Cuxson.  Won't you come, Lady Hickle?"
+
+Leonie had suddenly bent to adjust her stirrup leather.
+
+Her face was dead white, her eyes like stars, her mouth like a gate to
+heaven.
+
+Almost a year and not a word, not a sign!
+
+Tortured by doubt, racked with love, she had gone her way silently;
+blaming herself one moment for the ease with which she had shown her
+love; staking her all the next on the honesty of the man who had kissed
+her hand in forgiveness in the old Devon church.
+
+Making excuses, heaping the blame upon herself, wearying, wondering--and
+now!
+
+She lifted her face, which shone like the Taj at noon, and the worshipful
+company of men looked at her, almost stunned by its incomprehensible
+radiance.
+
+"Yes," she said softly, without thought of the Devil's nerve-storm.
+"Yes, I will surely come!"
+
+As she spoke there was a terrific report as the hind tyre of a passing
+car burst with due violence, a sudden convulsive bound as the Devil leapt
+with all four feet off the ground, and a thunder of hoofs as, with the
+bit between his teeth, he cleared for the open just as a man on a
+sixteen-hand bay turned in at the race-stand opening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+  "To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
+  And witch the world with noble horsemanship!"--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+The onlookers behaved in the orthodox runaway-horse manner.
+
+Women screamed, or took the opportunity to manipulate a surreptitious
+powder-puff.
+
+Men shouted and waved their topees, or shouted and performed equestrian
+gymnastics, and the jockeys _en masse_ cursed their masters' presence,
+and the more or less mythical value of their respective mounts.
+
+Just for that one moment in which anything occurring out of your
+ordinary rut leaves you practically stunned into inertia.
+
+Then things began to shape themselves, and for one unbelievable second
+caste was thrown to the soft wind which was sweeping up the last rags
+of mist.
+
+Military mingled with commerce, the I.C.S. which, written in full,
+means God's Anointed, looked _at_ instead of _through_ the railway;
+jute condescended to the tourist, and white ejaculated to kaffyolay as
+they all sat gazing after the retreating form of the Devil and the
+pursuing shapes of one or two, who, fairly decently mounted, were
+pegging away stout-heartedly in a perfectly vain, but praiseworthy
+effort to save Leonie from certain death.
+
+And then a sigh of relief went up.
+
+A bay, stretched out, was flying like the wind, hoofs thundering on the
+hard ground, tail streaming, as, urged by his master's heel and voice,
+he strove to get to the tank before the runaway.
+
+The distance and the speed were too great, the horse and kit were not
+sufficiently familiar to allow the spectators to identify the one man
+who seemed to have a plan in his head, and a horse under him.
+
+The women strained their eyes in an endeavour to distinguish him, men
+kept theirs glued to Leonie who was riding straight and apparently
+making no effort to check the Devil, and policemen, forgetful of their
+dignity, their status, and their red turbans, hung over the rails near
+the grand-stand entrance with a riff-raff of taxi chauffeurs, pukka
+chauffeurs and syce.
+
+For the first two hundred yards across the brown grass of the Maidan,
+Leonie thoroughly enjoyed the tearing gallop, having failed to grasp
+the fact that the Devil was bolting; but after having spoken
+soothingly, and pulled firmly without making any impression, somewhere
+about the middle of the polo ground she awoke to the fact that
+something had to be done.
+
+"They're in it!  No! missed, by Jove!"
+
+The jockey bunched himself in an ecstasy of relief, and his mare danced
+with a fellow-electrical feeling as the Devil, wheeling sharply from
+the sparkling water in the tank, missed the lone tree by a foot; then
+gathering fresh impetus from the ever-nearing sound of thudding hoofs,
+tore towards the rails enclosing the two tracks.
+
+They are not high, but they are fairly close together, and four in all,
+and a horse, blind from fear or temper, is quite as likely to let you
+down at the first as at the fourth.
+
+But Jan Cuxson saw a gleam of hope.
+
+Surely the runaway would slacken, surely no horse could possibly take
+four fences at that terrific speed; and if he did slacken, then the
+bay, as nimble as a cat in spite of his weight, would catch up, and
+something would be done before they dashed headlong across the
+tram-threaded, crowded Kidderpore Road.
+
+Except for admiring her seat and seeming calm acceptance of her
+inevitable and horrible end, he had not bothered about the girl as a
+human being; but he frowned suddenly in a vague effort of recollection
+when she stretched out her hand in a beckoning gesture for help to the
+man she heard racing to her rescue.
+
+"By Jove!" he cried, and "_By_ Jove!" repeated the others behind, and
+"By _Jove_!" echoed the distant on-lookers as, without hesitation or
+click of hoof on wood, the Devil rose to the first, the second, the
+third and the fourth rail, skimming them like a bird, while the bay,
+just two rails behind, crashed over them with nothing to spare.
+
+Inky words take a long time to write, but Leonie's perilous career
+towards the river was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes,
+leaving the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, _gharries_ and
+trams no time in which to make an opening for her tempestuous passage.
+
+"Wah!  Wah!" shouted a group of natives, draped in gaily coloured
+shawls, who watched admiringly the woman's perfect seat, caring not an
+_anna_ that she might be thrown and break her neck or be crushed to
+death.  In fact, the halo of death encircling the woman's head lent
+enchantment to the sport, causing some of the more wealthy to bet upon
+her end.
+
+A woman, white or brown, more or less in India of what account? though
+it were a different matter in the case of the sahib who rode in
+pursuit, with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes of fire.
+
+Two women, with babes astraddle on the hip, turned to watch Leonie,
+then stuffing more betel nut into their already crimson mouths, moved
+lightly through the dust towards the bazaar.  Crouched at the foot of a
+tree, inhaling the smoke from the bowl of his rude native pipe, an old
+man under the benign influence of the drug, lost in dreams, took no
+notice whatever of the disturbance around him.
+
+But the drivers, with raucous cries, twisted the tails of their kine to
+port or starboard, or beat them forcibly, and the tram driver, roused
+from the lethargy engendered by the cool of the early morning, by the
+shouts and cries, put on his brake, bringing his tram to a stand-still
+just as, with a terrific clatter of hoofs, Leonie dashed past the front
+of it with Cuxson at her heels.
+
+There was a moment's uproar when, wishing for a better view, the driver
+of a tawdry _ekka_ urged his half-starved pony forward.
+
+The bay caught the side of the pony's bleeding mouth, causing the
+wretched animal to rear from pain and twist sideways into a bullock
+cart.
+
+In its usual leisurely way the bullock swung itself also sideways, and
+almost under the bay's feet, causing him to lose a precious second, for
+which Cuxson made up by a ruthless use of his spurs, whilst before
+Leonie's eyes, quite close, through the trees, appeared the funnels and
+masts of the river craft.
+
+"Oh!" she said involuntarily, having retained no impression during her
+motor drives of the road to Kidderpore; as the Devil tore with her
+across the old polo ground and the old Ellenborough course, straight to
+the crowded Strand Road.
+
+And then she sighed a little sigh of relief, for the bay heaved
+alongside and a hand stretched for her bridle.
+
+Side by side they clattered across the Strand towards the Prinseps
+Ghat, standing just as ostracised and white as the Marble Arch.
+
+Would the two horses crash headlong into the columns, or would the
+Devil yield in time to the strong hand pulling on the bit?
+
+Neither.
+
+Terrified by the shouts of the populace, and the shrill whistling from
+the river, he raced along so close to the left side of the monument
+that Cuxson's boot scratched against the stone.
+
+But as they crashed across the Strand and the sharp incline on the
+other side of the railway lines appeared, Cuxson, knowing that the
+moment had arrived, dropped his reins, and gripping the bay with his
+knees, leant over towards Leonie as she dropped her reins, and
+loosening her grip on the pommel, prepared to break her neck or her
+back or both as she slipped from the saddle.
+
+Then she felt an arm round her waist.
+
+She knew intuitively her rescuer's intention, _but_----!
+
+Would a man's left arm be strong enough to lift her across her horse's
+hind-quarters at the terrific speed they were going, combined with her
+weight?
+
+Would he be able to hold her until his horse slackened speed, or would
+they both overbalance and hurtle to the ground together?  Would there
+be time to stop the horse, or would they all be hurled into the water?
+
+The questions had hardly flashed through her mind when she felt herself
+lifted and swung.
+
+For one petrifying moment the bay, pulled savagely until blood stained
+the bit, reared with its double weight within a yard of the steep
+incline, then, yanked cruelly by its master, swung sideways and came
+down; just as the Devil, striving at the last moment to check his wild
+career, hesitated for one half-second, then, pushed by his own terrific
+impetus, slid over the incline, and turning a complete somersault
+backwards, crashed into the water.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Leonie's scarlet mouth trembled, and her yellow-green eyes gleamed as
+the man she loved pressed both her hands in his against his coat, until
+the high relief of the button was marked upon her skin, even through
+her glove.
+
+"You," she said, so softly that the one note sounded like the chime of
+a temple bell.
+
+"You!" he said, giving her arms a little savage wrench, then letting
+her go as the sound of approaching hoofs heralded the arrival of the
+first of the hunt to be in at the averted death.
+
+A score or more of natives in their vivid colours, which seem so atune
+with all that has to do with love, mattered not at all; but Leonie
+turned and pointed casually to the Devil, enjoying his matutinal bath,
+as the boy flung himself from the discredited polo pony on which he had
+done his best.
+
+He seized both her hands and held them very tightly, then catching
+sight of Cuxson, let them go suddenly.
+
+"Of course!" he said, "of course you would--you lucky beggar!"  Then
+added triumphantly, "But anyway, _I_ told her so!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+  "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Guy Dean, the cheery optimistic lad who worshipped openly at Leonie's
+beautiful feet, and who was seeing the world at the behest of his
+wealthy old father, had been as good as his word.
+
+Bursting with excitement, he hurled himself into his racing-car one
+Sunday morning, about a fortnight after Leonie's hasty ride riverwards,
+and passed like a whirlwind through the fairly empty streets of
+Calcutta and the suburb of Ballygunge to the Jodhpur Club.
+
+She was waiting for breakfast under the trees with some friends,
+discussing the four-some they had just finished, and watching the
+arrival of various cars which were parked, with some difficulty, with
+the others which had arrived earlier.
+
+"Sounds all right," said Cuxson, as he looked with disfavour upon the
+club's breakfast _piece de resistance_, namely fatty sausages and
+mashed of all things.  "I am beginning to feel quite thrilled.  Let's
+see, it will take us about a day to get to Tiger's Point by launch from
+Kulna, and there we find monkeys, adjutant birds, spotted deer, and
+tigers all ready."
+
+"Don't rot!" said young Dean.  "I've bribed the finest _shikari_ in the
+whole of Bengal to stage-manage the whole thing; he did seem rather
+contemptuous over the _chotar shikar_, as he called it, I must say,
+until I began to juggle with backsheesch, and then he bucked up
+considerably and said he would do his very best to provide sport for
+the mems.  The programme includes a ruined temple but not a tiger,
+'cause he says it would be too risky a job at such short notice; also,
+and the real reason _I_ should say, there hasn't been a tiger seen,
+anyway killed, since one was wounded and caught near that same Hindu
+temple umpteen years ago."
+
+Leonie wrinkled her forehead at the last sentence, and looking up
+caught Jan Cuxson's eyes upon her.
+
+"That sounds _so_ familiar," she said perplexedly, "I----"
+
+"The tiger at the Zoo which we knew all those years ago was trapped
+near a ruined Hindu temple in the Sunderbunds, Lady Hickle," he said
+quietly, watching the curious dilation of the pupils in the greenish
+eyes as he spoke.
+
+"The very one!" broke in young Dean, as he suspiciously eyed a
+proffered curry.
+
+"How did you come to think of the stunt?"
+
+"I ran up against a perfectly top-hole native prince at polo last
+month.  Amongst other things we started talking elephant and
+_bagh_--tiger, you know," laughed the lad, who always seemed to be on
+the point of bursting with high infectious spirits.  "No, take it away,
+I will _not_ eat a cold _chupattie_ of the consistency of a bicycle
+tyre--as I was saying, we talked tiger, and somehow or other he
+suggested a few days' pursuit, through the Sunderbunds, of the spotted
+deer, muntjak or sambur----"
+
+"Neither."
+
+"Well, they're _spotted_."
+
+"Dogs, perhaps."
+
+Ignoring the execrable repartee, the boy turned completely round to
+Leonie.
+
+"By the way, Lady Hickle, if you ever go to Benares, don't forget to
+get off _en route_ and visit the tomb of what's-its-name, it's quite
+near--oh!  I forget--but it's on one of this fellow's father's estates.
+They don't let many people go and see it--afraid, I expect, of paper
+bags but if you _do_ go you'll find an elephant or two hanging about to
+take you to the place in state.  He's, the native prince, got some of
+the finest elephants in the whole of this mosquito-ridden land--makes a
+hobby of them."
+
+"What happened to the original tiger?"
+
+"Noah pushed him into the ark."
+
+The lad grinned, and offered his cigarette to Leonie, who shook her
+head.
+
+"Oh! stop fooling, Dean.  Did a sahib manage to trap the brute, or
+what?"
+
+"Yes! and sent it across to Blighty and shoved it into the Zoo.
+They're frightfully sick about that tiger being in a cage; they
+wouldn't have minded a sahib killing it for the good of mankind it
+seems, but putting it behind bars is an insult to some god, or
+something like that.  Are you any good as a gun, dear lady?"
+
+Leonie smiled at the tardiness of such an important question.
+
+"Fair," she said, refusing an unkempt pot of marmalade as she turned to
+Cuxson.  "I used to pass most of my holidays with the Wetherbournes,
+you know them, don't you?  They were awfully keen on sports, and had a
+rifle-range, but I could beat them any day with a revolver."
+
+"That doesn't matter, Lady Hickle," said the lad blithely.  "All you'll
+have to do'll be to bob up and down in the tiger-grass in the approved
+style; keep your trigger away from the bush, and so as to feel
+thoroughly creepy, your eye out for pugs; which, in case some of you
+don't know, means tiger-tracks, not the dog with the beastly curly
+tail--and--oh, jolly!--here come the Talbots--just in time for the
+_khubber_ which means tiger-news for those whose Hindustani is not as
+perfect as mine.  Mrs. Talbot, don't pass us by, we have plenty of room
+and some superb sausages."
+
+Edna Talbot laughingly sank into a chair next Leonie whom she liked,
+and immediately became enthralled in the discussion.
+
+Honest, sweet little woman, with an honest plodding husband in a native
+regiment, inhabiting the dreary crumbling fort, without a murmur,
+whilst living in hopes of better things to come.  Soft-voiced,
+considerate towards her native servants who worshipped her, one of the
+finest shots in India, and a true upholder of the British Raj in word,
+action, and clothes.
+
+A perfect oasis, in fact, among the desert of her sisters, who storm in
+season and out at their native staff, before whom they likewise show
+themselves in ill-considered neglige, with their unbrushed hair down
+their backs, and their bare feet thrust into the evening shoes of last
+night's dance.
+
+So it came about without any undue fuss that, after surviving the
+excruciating heat of the railway journey, three sahibs, two mem-sahibs,
+and their servants steamed out of Kulna in two launches to Tiger's
+Point, where awaited them the finest _shikari_ in all Bengal, with an
+adequate retinue in which was included a _chukler_ or skin dresser.
+
+And who would notice the look in an ayah's eyes as she wiped her
+beloved mem-sahib's ant-ridden bunk with cotton-waste soaked in
+kerosene, and who on earth would connect the jungle guide with the
+British Museum.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+  "A mighty hunter, and his prey was man!"--_Pope_.
+
+
+It was the second evening and they were nearing the ruined temple.
+
+Walking silently and in single file along a faintly discernible track
+is an eerie proceeding if you are not used to the Sunderbunds.
+
+True, in this jungle there are no serpent-like creepers festooned from
+tree to tree to impede your progress, or luxuriant and rank vegetation
+to hide snakes and other poisonous reptiles; neither is there a canopy
+of thick dark leaves above to obliterate the light of day, or the stars
+at night.
+
+But the space between the crowding sundri trees which predominate, is
+packed with an undergrowth of light shrubs through which you have to
+force and tear your way if you lose the track; and you trip and twist
+your ankle at every step on the abominable sundri breathers which
+thrust themselves through the soil at every inch, and vary in thickness
+from a stick of vermicelli to a good stout bough.
+
+"Look," will whisper your _shikari_ as he sinks silently to the ground;
+and look you do with all your eye-power, and yet fail to see the
+spotted deer gazing at you, motionless from sheer fright, only a few
+yards away in the undergrowth, so at one is the animal's colouring with
+the dappled shadows on the leaves.
+
+What depths of humiliation you plumb when the deer flees to safety
+through the trees and your _shikari_ sighs.
+
+Leonie as a gun had proved a dire, undiluted failure.
+
+As a companion no one could beat her.  Nothing tired her, nothing
+dismayed her.  The terrific heat, the untoward hours and meals, the
+sting of mosquito, and the rip of the thorn left her unmoved.
+
+She and Edna Talbot had gleefully climbed the ladder up to one of the
+two _suapattah_ huts, which are a kind of shelter of leaves built for
+the sundri wood collector upon high platforms near the water, and in
+which they had passed their first vermin-stricken night.  They had
+climbed cheerfully down the next morning without a word of complaint
+about the hours of torture they had endured as they sat at the hut door
+in the light of the moon, whiling away the time until the jungle cocks
+should crow by watching various shapes come down to the creek to drink.
+
+But the first time a deer, hypnotised by fear or curiosity, had stood
+stock-still before her, simply asking for death, Leonie put her gun
+down and shook her head.
+
+"I can't," she said sturdily.  "I simply _could not_ kill except in
+self-defence."
+
+And although young Dean sighed lugubriously over his lady's
+defalcation, Jan Cuxson adored her utterly for her womanliness, and
+translated the remark the head _shikari_ made as he handed back to the
+mem-sahib the rifle he had examined.
+
+"He says he knows that in time of need you would be brave, and would
+have no fear even of a man-eater, but he says that you _must_ carry
+your rifle because you can never tell in the jungle what may be
+awaiting you round the next corner."
+
+As none of the party knew that the temple stood well hidden but quite
+close to the edge of one of the smallest creeks, open only to the
+narrowest native craft, they had no idea they were being taken there by
+a most circuitous route; and the _shikari_ who did know thought that
+the silent guide was doing it purposely in order to give the sahibs an
+opportunity to add yet more to the ever-increasing bag of
+odds-and-ends, also to his backsheesch later on.
+
+They were all longing to get to the ruins; more than desirous for their
+evening meal; aching to remove their boots, and the dust, and other
+evidence of a hard day's tramp.
+
+"We are almost there, mem-sahib," said the very fine old _shikari_ who,
+by the way, is a real personage, as he noticed a certain lack of
+elasticity in Leonie's movements.  "Let us hasten, because at the fall
+of the shadows, all that is evil will come down to the waters, and
+behold! as this jungle is cut across and yet across with water-ways,
+the evil ones may even cross the sahibs' path."
+
+"How much farther is it?"
+
+"Another half-mile of this path, sahib, then through a glade without
+trees, then another mile and we find the outer wall of the temple."
+
+The perfect English came from a small knot of natives difficult to
+distinguish in the shadows.
+
+Leonie swung round and stared, and turning to Jan Cuxson put her hand
+on his arm.
+
+"Funny, isn't it?" she said softly.  "But do you know I am sure I have
+heard that voice before, and all this"--and she waved a hand
+vaguely--"seems so very, very familiar."
+
+The head-man halted them once more at the edge of the clearing.
+
+Strange bare spots these clearings which occur now and again in the
+Sunderbunds, looking for all the world as though they _had_ been
+cleared by man some time or another for building purposes.  Well, who
+knows if that doughty adventurer, Khan Jehan, did not prospect
+thereabouts centuries back.
+
+"We will now place the mem-sahibs in the centre of a widening circle,"
+said the _shikari_ patiently, showing no sign of the detestation in
+which he held all sports-women, and the amount of trouble and anxiety
+their presence always entailed in a _shikar_, however insignificant.
+
+To lose a sahib would be bad enough, but to see a mem-sahib seized and
+carried off before your very eyes, well, by the power of all the gods,
+that would mean ruin if not death; for, being a very wise old man,
+however good the news, he always prepared for the worst.
+
+"I dislike these clearings at the setting of the sun, O defender of the
+poor!" he explained to the major, who kept his wife close and was
+beginning to wish he had not brought her, even if she were far and away
+the better shot of the two.  "The trouble is upon one without even the
+warning of a cracking twig.  Neither have I any love for the temple,
+for behold! one, even a great _guru_ up to within a few moons of this
+day, lived there in worship, making sacrifice to the Black One.  Yet is
+he not there to welcome us.  Maybe he has fallen victim to the _bhoot_
+of the great cat whom he once fed."
+
+Luckily for their peace of mind the sahib log only understood a quarter
+of a man's lament, and did not trouble their heads about ghosts.
+
+"Aye, verily am I bewitched to allow of such tarrying, likewise to let
+such fear enter my head," he muttered to himself, and as a cloak to his
+misgivings sharply ordered ten men to proceed to the centre of the
+clearing in a semi-circle, and there await further orders.
+
+They did as they were ordered, and were standing motionless when
+suddenly without a sound a great striped body leapt straight from the
+shadows of the surrounding trees upon a boy who had out-distanced his
+companions.
+
+The instant double report of Jan Cuxson's rifle deadened the lad's
+horrible screaming and the growling of the wounded beast as it crouched
+flat, almost hidden behind the human body in the undergrowth, with tail
+lashing, and great claws tearing the boy's shoulder, as the rest of the
+terrified coolies ran shouting back to the party.
+
+"Fire, sahib," commanded the _shikari_.
+
+"Can't," tersely replied Major Talbot.  "I shall kill the boy if I do;
+the brute's making a shield of his body.  I'll creep round to the flank
+and----"
+
+"Fire, sahib," urged the native.  "Better to kill the lad as he is
+badly wounded," then added, "Tesch," as Talbot shook his head.  "Stay
+here, sahib, to protect the mem-sahibs, I will creep to----"
+
+"_God_!"
+
+The word simultaneously escaped the three men as they and Edna Talbot
+raised their rifles.
+
+Leonie was walking across the space, neither hastening nor hesitating,
+towards the tiger which crouched, growling softly, with its tail
+sweeping the ground.
+
+Did she hypnotise the brute, or did her supreme courage build an
+invisible barrier between the two?
+
+Who knows!
+
+Anyway she calmly approached within five yards, raised her rifle, took
+deliberate aim, and fired just as, with a hoarse-coughing roar, the
+tiger sprang.
+
+There was the dull thud of a bullet, a snarl, and the animal fell back
+across the boy's body, twitching convulsively.
+
+Without one moment's hesitation, while the rest of the party stood
+helpless owing to her position, Leonie, letting fall her rifle and
+drawing her revolver, walked right up to the writhing brute and fired
+straight into the terrible mouth.
+
+With one supreme effort the tiger reared itself on its hind legs, gave
+a choking, strangled cough ending in a spurt of blood and froth which
+drenched Leonie, and fell back dead; and the entire native staff,
+shouting in wonder and joy, tore across the clearing and prostrated
+themselves, in grateful layers around the girl's heavily booted feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+  "For her house inclineth unto death!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+We lie beneath the mosquito net, we undress behind the purdah, we sit
+on the verandah, or stroll in the compound; we dance, we ride, we eat,
+we sleep, ever heedless of the eyes watching, and of the hidden form;
+but above all of that relentless will which causes some of us
+uncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars,
+to our subsequent disgust and wonderment.
+
+Leonie, with Jan Cuxson behind her, stopped outside the temple door,
+which, hanging upon one hinge, moved slowly to and fro in the night
+breeze.
+
+And at the side of the altar, in the black shadows of the doorway which
+led to the secret places of the temple, a pock-marked native woman,
+draped in an orange coloured _sari_ embroidered in silver, laid one
+hand upon the priest's arm and pointed with the other.
+
+"Behold the Sahib," she whispered with a snarl of hate at the corners
+of her mouth, stained crimson with betel juice.  "He who seeks her in
+wife," she continued, pushing the _sari_ back from about her head so
+that the thirteen silver rings she wore in her crumpled left ear
+tinkled faintly, and her nose-ring of gold set with small but real
+turquoise gleamed dully, "and once wedded she will return across the
+Black Water.  O father of the people, O wise one, I love her and thou
+didst promise."
+
+She suddenly beat her breast, and the heavy silver bracelets jingled
+faintly, then shrank back against the painted wall as a young man, even
+the jungle guide, and beautiful to the verge of unseemliness, stealing
+from the shadows, smote her fiercely across the mouth, and pulled the
+_sari_ roughly over her head.
+
+"Hold thy peace and watch," he whispered, with a swift movement of the
+arm, most suggestive of a cobra uncoiling itself with intent to strike,
+as Leonie turned away from the doorway with a shudder.
+
+She took two steps and stopped irresolute, with the rays of the full
+moon shining upon her upturned perplexed face.
+
+Then she stared down at the myriad things which crawled and hopped in
+and out of the gleaming bones which lay about in little heaps, or
+scattered in ones and twos, even up to the door and into the dim
+interior.
+
+Too absorbed, neither Jan nor Leonie noticed the murmur of voices from
+the far end of the court, nor the reek of the tiger's blood which came
+from her stained dress and the carcase of the dead beast which was in
+the process of being skinned, and around which hovered the native staff
+awaiting the distribution of the coveted tiger's fat.
+
+Which more by faith, than any medicinal property it contains, is
+supposed to work miracles in stressful times of rheumatism, and cattle
+sickness.
+
+Jan Cuxson, trying to grasp and knot together the tag ends of a dawning
+knowledge, stood behind his beloved, patiently awaiting her next
+desire, instead of picking her up in his arms as he should have done,
+and carrying her off to safety, a good wash and a better dinner at the
+other end of the court.
+
+He was surprised when she spoke quickly and below her breath.
+
+"Take me away," she whispered hoarsely as he caught her outstretched
+hands and pulled her fiercely into his arms.  "Take me away, the place
+is evil--evil I tell you--and"--she raised her hand and passed it
+across his face, laughing softly, "I think I am bewitched--something
+is--is--pulling--is------"
+
+She looked back over her shoulder, stared hard for a moment, and then,
+tearing herself free, ran like a hunted deer through the crumbling
+doorway into the blackness of the temple.
+
+"Who fears, O Woman?" whispered the man, whose beauty touched the
+unseemly as he sank to the ground.  "Who fears?"
+
+Half-way up the temple Leonie stopped, standing in a silver pool of
+moonshine which blazed like the blade of a knife through a hole in the
+roof; lighting up the ruined altar, the grass-grown stones, and the
+image of a female deity carved in bas-relief upon a huge block of
+granite.
+
+Nude was the woman carved out of stone, and of so dark a blue as to be
+almost black; with tongue protruding and hair in waving masses, through
+which were thrust four arms; garlanded with skulls she danced wantonly
+upon the body of a man, with two hands raised in blessing, in the third
+a knife, in the fourth a bleeding head.
+
+Kali!  Kali!  Kali!
+
+If only Jan Cuxson had been able to do something, anything, what a mint
+of trouble he would have saved himself and others, but instead, he
+stood rooted to a spot just inside the door, incapable of moving hand
+or foot, held by a force he did not even guess at, and therefore could
+not fight, watching Leonie as she moved slowly forward, as though she
+were walking in her sleep towards the blood-stained altar.
+
+"So will she always come," murmured the old priest as he laid his hand
+caressingly upon his well-beloved pupil.  "So will she always come.
+Love?  Pah! who fears the love of man in the Black One's temple?  Who?"
+
+And there was no answer from the shrouded future.
+
+Leonie stood still, quite still, unconscious of the eyes about her, and
+everything save the terrible problem she was trying to solve.
+
+Then suddenly she cried aloud, and the words, like wings, beat against
+the roof and walls.
+
+"I know!" she cried, "I know!  I know!"
+
+And whirling round towards the spell-bound man, she turned her hands,
+palm downwards, with a wonderful eastern gesture of renunciation, and
+crumpled into a heap before the altar, and the three watching figures
+stole noiselessly back into the secret places of the temple as Cuxson,
+freed, strode hastily up to his beloved.
+
+He gathered up the unconscious girl as tenderly as a woman, oh! a good
+deal more so, and turning her face to his shoulder, carried her out of
+the temple; stopping for a second to hold her more securely in his left
+arm as he bent to pick up something which glittered in the moonlight: a
+piece of orange silk heavily embroidered in silver, for which Leonie
+had ransacked the Old, the New, and the Lal Bazaars; a bit of her
+ayah's _sari_ torn and caught in a sundri breather.  "And she stayed
+behind on the boat," said Jan to himself, with a flash of inspiration
+as he turned the thing over in his hand, and slipped it into his pocket.
+
+And though his heart ached over his beloved's mental and physical
+distress, he inwardly rejoiced at the untoward occurrences of the day
+which had supplied his solid, trustworthy brain with the outline of a
+key to the problem.
+
+Dear, stolid old Jan, who, given the time, could beat anyone at
+unravelling the hardest, hard-tied, knotted problem.
+
+With a tale of sudden faintness he gave her into the care of Edna
+Talbot, who cooed and fluttered over her like the woman she was, in
+spite of her workmanlike appearance and her outrageous craving for a
+big meal.  And she herded the sahibs to the far end of the court, where
+lay the sick man, after the big meal in which Leonie had joined right
+heartily; a little white about the face, truly, and shadowed about the
+eyes, but normal and content, with not the vaguest recollection of what
+had happened after the killing of the tiger.
+
+"Oh! don't be dense," Edna Talbot said quite brusquely when Guy Dean,
+having brutally ignored the suffering native, suggested returning to
+the others.  "You surely don't want to make a triangle."
+
+"Triangle--what!"
+
+"Well, you know the old saying about two being company, don't you?"
+
+"Of course I do--that's where it comes in," replied the lad not over
+lucidly, "_I_ want to make the two!"
+
+The major laughed at the rueful countenance, as he clapped the boy on
+the shoulder.
+
+"You'll get over it all right, old fellow; it's just like inoculation,
+a feeble taste of something which might have been ever so much worse.
+Trust me, you'll get over it!"
+
+"_Never_!" stoutly maintained young Dean as he heaved a stone at
+something which fled across the court, his mental vision failing to
+register a picture of the future in which Jill Wetherbourne, daughter
+of Molly and Jack, occupied the principal position.
+
+Later, Leonie, sitting with Jan Cuxson on a block of fallen masonry,
+smiled sweetly upon the head _shikari_, who, salaaming, prayed her to
+honour him by accepting a little memento of the _shikar_ which had
+terminated so successfully upon the slaying of the tiger.
+
+In his open palm he held two small bones about two and a half inches in
+length, two little superstitious tokens which ensure sons to the woman
+who treasures them, and which, he told her in his broken English, were
+only found in the tiger, one on each side of the chest, unconnected
+with any other bone at all.
+
+"It is a charm, O! Mem Sahib, defender of the poor, which will
+assuredly bring you happiness.
+
+"And may the sons of the sahib grow straight as the pine tree," he
+added slowly in his own tongue, as he felt the sahib's eyes fixed
+steadily upon him.
+
+"What did he say to you, Jan?"
+
+As the shikari turned away Cuxson caught the girl's hands and crushed
+them up against his heart.
+
+"I will tell you some day!"
+
+"Tell me _now_!"
+
+"No! not now!  It is of love that I should have to speak, and in all
+these past weeks you have not let me touch your hand or speak to you of
+love.  You have put a barrier between us, a barrier of a misplaced
+fear, which has grown higher and stronger since I have had to confess
+to failure in finding any trace of your old servant.  India is wide,
+dear, and its villages uncountable, and _I_ am not distressed over the
+empty return of these last months; all that worries me is, that while
+prowling about the Himalayas out of reach of the post, I never knew
+what had happened to you, or that you were in India."
+
+Leonie sighed as she opened her hand and looked at the small bones.
+
+"Tell me now, Jan!" she insisted.
+
+"No!  Leonie, I cannot.  There will be no one near us when I do tell
+you, and except as a souvenir of that very fine old man, you need not
+keep them, because my love is a still greater and surer charm to bring
+you the great happiness they promise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+  "And thou shalt become an astonishment,
+  a proverb, a byword."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+When Leonie returned to Calcutta she found that the tale of her
+courageous act which had preceded her, and of which home and local
+papers had exhausted themselves in praise, had not served to endear her
+to that little white community, which suffers from social myopia, and
+the self-adjusted chains of what it most mistakenly calls caste.
+
+Not likely that the feminine members of Jute, military, railway, or law
+circles _would_ open their arms any wider to this young, and beautiful,
+widowed creature with the mop of naturally curling hair, now that, if
+so minded, she could verbally and positively flap one of the finest
+tiger skins that had ever come out of Bengal in their heat-stricken
+faces.
+
+In fact some of the young ones as they wrestled with the nightly
+problem of their own dank, straight particular bit of woman's glory,
+would doubtless, if questioned, have upheld the Hindu custom of
+completely shaving the widowed head.
+
+Many, in fact, had been the meetings of these younger mem-sahibs in
+bungalows, or flats, at Firpoes, or in clubs, where, under the pretext
+of criticising the latest fashions from overseas, they discussed the
+pros and cons of accepting this person into the haven of their
+Anglo-Indian bosom.
+
+The elder ones kept out of the clatter, having suffered and fought in
+similar crises in their own day as had their mothers, and their
+mothers' mothers before them since the days before the mutiny; being
+moreover resigned to the corrugated appearance of their faces, and the,
+in consequence, perambulatory instincts of their lords.
+
+"Her _undies_," said a woman who, with the excuse of borrowing a book,
+had essayed to spy out the land of Leonie's cabin.  "I saw her running
+ribbons in them--the most _ex_-quisite crepe de Chine, hand embroidered
+and trimmed with _real_ lace!"
+
+"How _de trop_!" had answered a matron, whose household _linge_ and
+personal _lingerie_ showed complete only in the sections of finger
+napkins and undervests, as is the way of a careless, untidy woman's
+linen stock.
+
+"Well, that's easily understood," chimed in a third.  "After all she
+_is_ trade."
+
+And the no's had carried it.
+
+Wherefore, although in ignorance of the verdict, she did exactly what
+every other woman did, and went where they went, she most certainly did
+_not_ have what one would call a good time.  She loved the Maidan and
+golf at the Jodhpur Club, or Tollygunge, before breakfast; she
+cordially loathed shopping and duty calls; grudged the hours lost out
+of life in the daily afternoon siesta, and took part in dances, bridge,
+dinners, and all the usual monotonous effort to kill time, with the air
+of an indifferent, disgruntled statue.
+
+Gossip was no joy to her, scandal she would not tolerate, and the women
+commenced the task of ostracism by means of half-uttered phrases and
+little invidious smiles; and most men voted her _odd_ owing to a
+certain indescribable barrier which they invariably encountered when
+they approached her over impulsively, and which really did _not_ tally
+with her enticing, bizarre beauty.
+
+Yes! they voted her odd, certainly, but in the secret places of their
+hearts and bungalows some of them would ponder.
+
+Had not the major sahib's bearer curled himself up on the mat beneath
+the bed and gone to sleep, while the major sahib, after the ball, had
+sat in his shirt-sleeves upon that bed until three in the morning; and
+over and over again mentally slid up and down the room with supple,
+slender Leonie in his arms, where, in the earlier hours of the night,
+she had rested seemingly content for one half-second before he had let
+her go under the palms.
+
+And, "Damn it all, she's not a flirt," did not a certain youthful sahib
+who worshipped openly at her shrine exclaim, as he thought, in the
+unpleasantly heated watches of the night, of that moment when she had
+smiled down sweetly into his adoring eyes, as his cheek brushed her
+hand while she was arranging her habit, and he her stirrup leather.
+
+How _were_ they to know that, distracted by an ever-increasing fear,
+and lost in an overwhelming love, Leonie had no more remembrance than
+the man in the moon of the fact that she had danced with the one, and
+smiled upon the other.
+
+It was the final flare of the season in the shape of a ball at
+Government House; one of those mixed massed gatherings to which you are
+invited either on account of your rank, or your unblemished reputation,
+or the fact that you've had the forethought to inscribe your name in
+the visiting-book.
+
+Leonie was standing with Jan Cuxson near an open door under a revolving
+fan which disturbed the outer masses of the hair she had piled
+haphazard upon the top of her small head, catching the great coils
+together with huge pins, and strengthening the entire structure by
+means of a finely wrought, diamond-hilted steel dagger, looted in the
+Mutiny by a not over-punctilious forbear.
+
+"I wonder you don't cut your hair to bits," had once remarked before a
+multitude, an envious dame, whose curls reposed cosily in a box o'
+nights, and who had grave doubts as to the sincerity of Leonie's tawny
+locks.
+
+"I run it through in its sheath," Leonie had replied, pulling the
+sheathed dagger out as she spoke, so that her hair had fallen in a
+jumbled scented mantle all over her, causing the men to put their hands
+in their pockets, or behind their backs, and the women to mechanically
+pat their heads; just as you fidget unconsciously with your veil, or
+the curls above your ear, when someone of your own sex, and far better
+turned-out, happens upon your horizon.
+
+On this night her absurdly small feet made her head look almost top
+heavy, just as the uncorseted small waist emphasised the width of her
+shoulders, and the violet shadows enlarged the opalescent weird eyes
+looking wearily on the scene around her.
+
+Why didn't she go back to England if she hated it all so much?
+
+Because she couldn't!  Because India held her and she waited upon Fate
+as patiently as ever did Mr. Micawber.
+
+"Lady Hickle ought to go to the hills, she's looking absolutely fagged!"
+
+The male voice drifted in through the window upon a pause in the music.
+
+"Well! continuous _sleep-walking's_ not likely to make you look your
+best, is it?"
+
+The damnable giggle at the end of the remark brought a frown to Jan
+Cuxson's face as he picked up somebody's wrap from a chair, put it
+round Leonie and led her unresistingly down the steps into the grounds.
+
+It sounds better to say "grounds" rather than "compound" when speaking
+of Government House.
+
+"I--I _hate_ all this," Leonie said impulsively as she sat down on a
+marble seat.  "I hate India--I--I----"
+
+She flung her head back, and it came to rest upon the man's shoulder,
+and she shivered ever so lightly when he pressed it still further back,
+pinioning her arms so that she could not move.
+
+"Leonie."
+
+The sudden authority in the voice brought a light to the eyes on a
+level with his mouth; she moved unconsciously, and Cuxson suddenly
+letting her go caught both her hands in one of his, pulled her round
+sideways, and jerked them up to his chin, and she laughed softly as she
+fell slightly forward; and laughed even more softly when he crushed her
+back again against him with his hands upon her breast.
+
+Both heedless in their love of the eyes watching, of the hidden form,
+and above all of that relentless will which causes some of us
+uncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars.
+
+If _only_ he had not hesitated, if only he had turned the face to him
+then and there and closed the gold-flecked eyes with kisses.
+
+But instead he held her crushed to the point of agony against him with
+his mouth upon the sweetness of her neck, leaving the gold-flecked eyes
+to open wider, and still wider as they stared straight into the
+shrubbery around, where the flaming poinsettia flowers looked black
+under the stars.
+
+"Beloved!  Leonie, listen----"
+
+"_Don't!_ please don't!"
+
+She pulled herself free and knelt on one knee upon the bench, with both
+hands outstretched against him; and he, not grasping the psychological
+points of the moment, sat down dumbly beside her, instead of mastering
+her physically, or mentally on the spot as it behoved him to do.
+
+Heavens! what fools some men can be with that jungle animal woman
+within their hands.
+
+"Leonie, listen dear, I want you to marry me, dear--soon!"
+
+The words fell upon Leonie's clamouring soul as dismally as the
+raindrops of your childhood fell upon the window-pane when you were
+waiting to start for a picnic.
+
+"You don't know what you are saying!" she replied.  "It is criminal
+even to think of such a thing--mad as I believe I am--mad as I shall be
+when I end in a padded room!"
+
+Her voice was barely a whisper, but it cut like slate on slate, and her
+eyes stared straight ahead as she continued speaking rapidly, almost
+uncontrollably, and yet with a certain air of relief as though glad to
+give vent in words to the horror which pressed upon her brain.
+
+"Although you pretend it is only sleep-walking," she went on, heedless
+of his efforts to interrupt her, "you know perfectly well there is
+something wrong with me.  You know it, so did your father, so does
+Auntie, people here are whispering it.  Yes! they are, they _are_," she
+reiterated, "and they are _right_.  Something more than just being
+frightened by my ayah happened to me in India all those years ago, oh!
+you know it did, I'm under a spell or bewitched--sometimes I have
+a--a--" she struck her forehead with her open hand as she crouched back
+upon the bench like some animal at bay--"a--oh! my God--you see--I
+cannot even say what it is.  Can't you tell me, Jan?  Can't you help
+me?  _You_--you say you love me--you say you have found a clue--for
+pity's sake follow it, follow it and save me--you--you----"
+
+"Leonie, _look_ at me!"
+
+Something in his voice forced her to look at him, and her eyes shone
+like flat pieces of opalescent glass so contracted were the pupils, but
+they widened even as she looked into the steadfast grey eyes, and her
+mouth relaxed into the shadow of a smile.
+
+Good heavens, why didn't he take her in his arms and smother her up
+against his heart, or put a bag over her head, or failing the bag, put
+his hand before her eyes?
+
+What fools some men can be with the woman they love within their reach.
+
+But instead he left her, hurt and humiliated and desolate, to sit half
+crouched by herself, whilst her eyes, against all striving, slowly
+veered round to the shrub.
+
+He held her hand, it is true, whilst he talked, but what good is _that_
+to a frightened woman whose heart is crying for protection, and whose
+body is clamouring to be forced into submission?
+
+"Dear," he said as Leonie stared at the poinsettia bush, "I am on the
+track at last, and in a very little time shall know exactly what
+happened to you all those years ago.  There is only one link missing,
+and that I shall surely find, as I find everything when I set my mind
+to it.  Then the whole thing will be cleared up, and this mysterious
+cloud lifted from you.  Look at me, dear!"  Leonie turned and looked at
+him blankly, and as he continued speaking, slowly, and as though
+against her will, turned her eyes back to the poinsettia bush.  "I want
+you now in your distress.  I want you in the storm as well as in the
+sunshine, dear; I love to see you smile, it would be heaven to _make_
+you smile.  Marry me, beloved, _now_.  Dear, won't you?  Let me lift
+the cloud from my _wife_.  Oh!  Leonie, think of it--my _wife_!"
+
+Leonie answered mechanically, as though she were repeating a lesson and
+had not heard one word of the man's pleading.
+
+"What have you found out?  And what is missing?"
+
+"I have found the woman who was your ayah."
+
+Leonie pulled her hands away, and pushing the hair off her forehead,
+sat quite still listening, but not hearing the music as it floated
+through the night air, watching without seeing the couples as they
+strolled about the grounds.
+
+And then she answered, but without any real interest, although very
+distinctly, shivering slightly as the man put the wrap over her bare
+shoulders.
+
+"Have you?  And who is she, really?  Of course I know her
+name--but--but what do you know about her?  I have had no answer to my
+letters since I've been out here, is the poor thing still working?"
+
+"She's--not exactly working for a living, dear, and she is--is----"
+
+He stopped short with a world of perplexity in his eyes, then went on
+as slowly and mechanically as Leonie had done.
+
+"Perhaps, dear, I--I had--better not say any more until--until I have
+everything quite clear."
+
+And he drew his hand sharply across his eyes as Leonie sighed.
+
+"Very well!" she replied gently.  "Just as you think best."
+
+"Tell me you love me, Leonie, let me be sure of that, let me just hear
+you say it once."
+
+She put out both her hands, and he took them and kissed them.
+
+"Dear, do you count me as _so_ little?  Don't you know, cannot you feel
+that a love like mine endures for ever?"
+
+"Do you still want the little white house behind the white
+wall--Leonie, _do_ you!"
+
+"Oh! Jan!"
+
+"Well, marry me--marry me, beloved, and give me the right to protect
+you--from trouble, and these slanderous, murderous tongues."
+
+Leonie's face was lovely to behold, swept by a wave of colour, and with
+eyes like stars; but she shook her head although a little smile parted
+the crimson mouth.
+
+"No! Jan!  Nothing will make me change.  Not until we know and until I
+am cured.  Do you think I would risk our love, and our happiness?  I
+shall never, never marry you as long as I have this--this longing
+to--this desire to--to--oh! what is it.  Find out what has happened to
+me, find out what I do when I walk in my sleep--just how mad I am, and
+if the madness can be cured, and if it can, _then_ I will--will----"
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+"I will--will----!"
+
+It was no pretty sight to watch her striving to speak, her mouth
+opening and shutting without sound, her hands against her throat.
+
+Then she looked at him suddenly, smiling sweetly, and put both hands in
+his, while he, sick with pain and unconfessed fear, changed the
+conversation abruptly by the grace of understanding.
+
+"I think you ought to go away, Leonie--to the hills--for a change.
+It's getting frightfully hot, why don't you?"
+
+"Yes!--I might--I think I will--I'm so tired of everything--so
+very--very tired!"
+
+"Where to, dear?"
+
+Leonie bent her head a little sideways as though listening, made a
+strange little movement with both her hands, then placed the open palms
+against her forehead and replied:
+
+"To Benares!"
+
+She had barely whispered the words, so quietly did she speak, as the
+poinsettia flowers bent slightly--to a passing breeze--may be!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+  "Dona praesentis cape laetus horae, ac
+  Lingue severa."--_Horace_.
+
+
+Leonie's first long-distance journey was just like other people's first
+long-distance journey in India.
+
+And being of the type which revels in the new and unknown, she loved it.
+
+Who wouldn't!
+
+The seething masses of dusky humanity enchanted her; she delighted in
+the glaring colouring, the clank of the holy man's chains, the
+incessant call of the water carrier and sweetmeat vendor, and the clang
+of iron on iron which announces the train's departure.
+
+She absolutely thrilled on disrobing the first night in the little
+bathroom while her ayah spread her sheets and pillows and blankets upon
+the lower berth; and when her bodywoman disappeared through the door
+leading to the servants' compartment, she lay for a time watching the
+stars, and the glimmer of passing mosque, or temple, or tomb.
+
+Then she laughed aloud in sheer content, wedged Jan Cuxson's box of
+chocolate biscuits safely into the side of the bunk, and turned to the
+side table to look for light literature in the shape of a magazine.
+
+Having acquired the pernicious habit of eating biscuits and reading
+before going to sleep, she frowned upon the discovery that her ayah
+appeared to have left the books upon Howrah Station; and had stretched
+her arm to rap upon the wall to summon the woman, when her eye caught
+sight of a paper volume lying under the opposite bunk.
+
+India is certainly a most dusty land, but a traveller can keep his
+railway compartment and boots spotless by distributing a few _pice_ to
+the dusky, cheery youngsters, who, salaaming, solicit the favour of
+using boot polish, or floor brush, to the mutual benefit of self and
+the sahib.  Leonie, therefore, felt no repugnance when, clutching the
+table with her left hand, she made a long arm and secured the book,
+which proved to be a guide to India's most famous beauty spots.
+
+She turned the leaves casually and laughed.
+
+"Why!  I'd completely forgotten it," she said aloud, turning the book
+sideways to look at an illustration.  "The wonderful tomb Guy Dean
+insisted upon my visiting if I ever went to Benares.  How beautiful!
+Must be the tomb of some ancestor of that young prince he was talking
+about.  Oh! how beautiful, and--oh! how helpful!  I suppose some
+Englishman must have left the book in the train by mistake."
+
+She had picked up a bit of paper which had fallen from the book; a
+rough time-table with directions in English as to the best means of
+getting to the world-famed monument.
+
+"That decides it," she said sleepily as she switched off the light,
+pulled a miniature mosquito net, deftly arranged by the ayah, over her
+head, and the sheet up to her neck.  "We get to the station
+to-morrow--sometime--disembark--put luggage into cloak-room--find
+elephant and--and dak bungalow--and--oh! almost full moon--how--_how_
+delicious---ride out and see the--the----"
+
+She slept, oblivious of the fact that she was carrying out implicitly
+the programme mapped out for her.
+
+Travelling in India is real sport when the train doors are likely to
+swing open at no given spot, soft-footed natives to enter
+surreptitiously and disappear as quietly upon sight of your open eyes;
+and guards to clamour for your ticket, while a mob collects outside
+your door at the junction to look at the pretty unveiled mem-sahib
+awakened from her slumber by a dignified bearer with his offering of
+_chotar hazri_, which means the thrice blessed early tea-tray.
+
+Her restless spirit was soothed by the rush of the train through the
+endless plain; strange scenes, strange sights wrenched her mind from
+the terrible question everlastingly throbbing in her brain; and her eye
+was not quick enough to distinguish one delicate oval face from
+another, or to notice that at each stopping place her ayah meandered
+down the length of the train to a compartment where, in consequence of
+his high caste and rank, a man sat utterly alone--unconcerned and
+totally oblivious of the screaming, chattering crowd upon the platform,
+of beggars, pilgrims, and _bona fide_ native travellers.
+
+True, for one moment at the station where she alighted for the
+world-famed tomb, she glanced back hurriedly at a native who placed
+himself between her and an unsightly epileptic; and she looked back
+once again as her intuition rapped out a message she did not grasp, and
+her ayah suddenly besought her help with the coolies.
+
+A dilapidated tonga, drawn by a pony of the same description, took her
+and her servant to the dak bungalow, built on a concrete platform in a
+jungle clearing about two miles outside the village.
+
+There she gave carte blanche for the arrangement of the evening trip to
+the guide who materialised serenely, all smiles and extreme deference.
+Bathed, and fed, she had her hair brushed for half an hour by her ayah;
+refused the offer of massage, which process she abhorred, and turned in
+and slept the afternoon away upon her own bedding spread on a charpoy.
+
+Later she bathed again, attired herself in a simple low-cut, white silk
+dress, dined, and wrapping herself in a heavy white Bedouin cloak,
+wedding present from Jill Wetherbourne, who had got it from her
+godmother in Egypt, seated herself on the verandah to await the arrival
+of whatever means of locomotion the guide had chosen to take her to the
+tomb.
+
+And down the jungle path loomed the shape of a great elephant, moving
+at a gentle shuffle but an almost incredible speed.
+
+Without audible instructions it stopped in front of the verandah, threw
+back its trunk, twined it gently about the middle of the _mahout_ or
+driver, lifted him from his seat behind its ears and placed him on the
+ground; then on a word, trumpeted shrilly in greeting to Leonie.
+
+"Oh!" said she as she almost sprang from her chair in delight.  "Oh!"
+
+The _mahout_ salaamed, standing in the moonlight at the animal's head.
+
+He made a vivid eastern picture, dressed as he was from head to foot in
+white, with two pleated side-pieces to the turban, hanging in suchwise
+as to conceal half the face; and the guide, who had been squatting on
+the edge of the path, also salaamed, smiling in glee at the mem-sahib's
+delight.
+
+"Behold, mem-sahib," he said, "is the elephant even Rama, the pearl of
+the prince's stables."  His English was not quite as intelligible as
+these printed words, but Leonie made shift to understand.
+
+"I have never seen such a beautiful elephant," she said, walking up to
+the great beast, followed by the guide, the ayah and the bungalow
+factotum.
+
+The mem's statement was quite within the range of possibility seeing
+that her elephant lore had been gathered from the Zoo and other
+low-caste specimens with their straight backs, mean tails, and long
+stringy legs.
+
+"Does the--the _mahout_ speak English, because my Hindustani is not
+very good.  I would like to have the--the beauty of the animal
+explained to me, and why it has its face and body painted; and why does
+he, the _mahout_, I mean, wear those side pieces to the turban, they
+are very unusual."
+
+A moment's pause, during which the _mahout_ stood like a rock, and then
+the guide, shuffling his feet, answered to the effect that the driver
+could not speak English, but that her humble servant would translate if
+the mem-sahib would deign to listen to his mean speech; that the man
+was the prince's best beloved--_mahout_, he added after a second's
+pause, and that the side pieces were part of the uniform worn by the
+prince's head-mahouts.
+
+Not a bit of which information was true, _mais que voulez vous_?
+
+So they all walked round Rama the beautiful, the guide translating the
+soft Hindustani into lamentable English.
+
+Rama, it seemed, was a _koomeriah_, a royal or high-caste elephant, and
+still a youth, being but forty years of age, _vide_ his ears.  His
+height was ten feet at the shoulder, and would the mem-sahib note the
+perfect slope of the back down to the beautiful, long, feathery tail.
+Also the massive chest and head, with the prominent lump between the
+eyes so bright and kind, and full of knowledge.  Notice also the deep
+barrel, and short, so very short, hind legs, the heaviness of the
+trunk, the plump cheeks which would indeed grace a comely elephant
+maiden; count the eighteen nails upon the lovely feet, and place her
+hand upon the soft skin which fell in folds about the tail.
+
+Leonie did as she was bid and ran her hand also down the nearest
+magnificent tusk, with tip cut off and ringed about the middle with
+bands of gold inlaid with precious stones.
+
+"Perfect ivory," continued the guide, "five feet in length with tip,
+curving upwards with the curve of the sickle moon, and sloping slightly
+from each other as though in anger."
+
+Leonie smiled at the guide's verbal imagery, and put her hand upon a
+cream coloured mark near the base of the broad trunk.
+
+"Why, I thought it was paint!" she said, speaking over her shoulder to
+the _mahout_, who, unperceived, held a fold of her white cloak in his
+hand.  "This is paint, surely," she added, running a finger-tip down
+the vermilion and white lines which covered the great beast's face and
+sides.
+
+It seemed that the yellowy-white blotches raised the animal's value
+above that of sacksful of rubies, and the painting of the face and
+sides served two purposes; one to render it easier for the animal to
+find favour in the eyes of the gods, the other to bring about the same
+result in the eyes of man; even as does woman when she accentuates the
+night blackness of her eyes with antimony; and the slenderness of her
+finger-tips with henna.
+
+In state procession it seemed that Rama the perfect carried a gold and
+jewel encrusted howdah upon his beautiful sloping back; that what was
+left uncovered of his anatomy was hung with a net of silver, with
+tassels of pearls; that strings of seed pearls were entwined in the
+glorious meshes of hair in the beautiful tail; and that his nails were
+manicured, bracelets of golden bells hung about the ankles, and buckets
+of perfume poured into his bath.
+
+"The _mahout_ has placed the humble cushioned seat this night upon the
+back, mem-sahib, so that nothing shall be between the mem-sahib and the
+light of the moon."
+
+Leonie gave orders that a succulent cake full of currants and flavour
+should be brought forthwith from her hamper, and having pushed it as
+far back into the mouth as possible, where it was demolished to the
+accompaniment of the most disgusting masticatory noises, laughed aloud
+when the elephant stood on its short hind legs to show its
+appreciation, and said thank you by means of a soft purring sound in
+the throat.
+
+The process of getting to the knees reminded Leonie somewhat of a
+sailing vessel she had seen rolling in a rough sea, but she settled
+herself comfortably in the cushioned seat and waited with glee for the
+_mahout_ to get into position upon the animal's neck and order it to
+rise.
+
+"What is he waiting for?" she asked, as he made no movement.
+
+"He wishes to know where the ayah is to sit," answered the guide.
+
+"_Ayah_!" said Leonie, and laughed gently.  "But I am going alone!"
+
+The _mahout_ said something swiftly.
+
+"The way is many miles through the jungle, mem-sahib; there is no dak
+bungalow, no people, the mem-Sahibs and also the sahibs go always
+accompanied."
+
+"I am going alone," said Leonie quietly.  "Tell the _mahout_ to get up."
+
+Upon a word of command the elephant got to its feet, and raised one
+knee; the _mahout_ placed one foot upon it and swung himself up to his
+seat upon the short neck, said something to the elephant, who moved off
+up the jungle path, while the servants salaamed deeply to Leonie, and
+again even more deeply in the direction of the elephant's head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+  "Some little talk awhile of me and thee
+  There seem'd--and then no more of thee and me."--_Omar Khayyam_.
+
+
+The elephant trumpeted before the gate.
+
+The two halves of the door opened from within, clanged against the
+sides, and the _durwans_ in scarlet and silver bent almost double as
+they salaamed before the white woman who passed under the red-stone,
+centuries-old gate upon the back of Rama the Great and Perfect.
+
+The elephant knelt and Leonie stepped on to the marble pavement,
+placing her hand for one instant upon the _mahout's_ arm to steady
+herself.
+
+She looked up and down the double line of cypress trees and gave a
+little cry, which was almost one of pain, at the sight of the glory
+before her; and pressing her hands above her thudding heart, longed
+with all her soul for the man she loved and had denied.
+
+For a moment she stood absolutely still, the heavy cloak swinging
+gently in the slight breeze, then walked down the steps, and like some
+ghost passed noiselessly beside the lily strewn water tanks towards the
+marble, wondrous Tomb.  Madhu Krishnaghar, waiting until she was well
+out of earshot, spoke to the elephant, bringing it to its feet, and
+gave a sharp order to the keepers of the door, which caused them to
+speed from the scene as fast as their feet would carry them towards the
+village where they had been commanded to stay until sunrise, leaving
+the girl, a prey probably to that inexplicably sensuous feeling which
+the desolation, and beauty, and pity of this place arouses in _some_,
+alone with the man who loved her as men love in the East.
+
+He followed her slowly beside the water tanks, and absorbed in his love
+and the joy of being alone with her, failed to catch the sharp call of
+apprehension when Rama, as faithful as a dog, and far more intelligent
+than many humans, rapped the ground smartly with the end of his trunk.
+
+Having been told by his beloved master to stand where he was until his
+return, and being obedient even unto death, he did not move; but he
+eyed the form which had slipped in through the gates with dislike, and
+shuffled his feet in distrust as the man disappeared behind the cypress
+trees.
+
+It was only a foolish curiosity-bitten _shudra_; a wretched member of
+the lowest and most servile class, who, passing on his way to his
+miserable hovel, had noticed the gate open at the untoward hour of
+midnight, and the absence of the ferocious _durwans_.
+
+His low caste, which is the least of all, had prevented him, up to this
+day, from entering what he thought must surely be paradise; and now he
+took the risk and slipped in, not only stricken with curiosity, but
+obsessed with a desire to tell a wonderful tale to his patient wife and
+four sons, who, because they were _his_ sons, were doomed to remain of
+the lowest servile caste; as would be their sons far, oh! far beyond
+the third and fourth generation.
+
+How was he to know that a woman with unveiled face was visiting the
+tomb at midnight, or that she was beloved by his master whose word was
+life, or death, to those who served him.
+
+Leonie passed through the silver gates into the tomb, and stood beside
+the marble, flower-strewn sarcophagi, which lie side by side, and over
+which, day and night, hangs a lighted lamp.
+
+She did not move when a whispered golden sound fell gently through the
+shadows.  Like a cobweb thread, so fine it was; like a thread of gold,
+so sweet it was; rising and falling, to rise again in one throbbing cry
+of love, pleading, insisting, despairing.
+
+The echoes caught and held it in the dim corners of the marble cupola,
+and answered cry with cry until the place seemed full of the sobbing of
+lost souls.  Back and forth, at the girl's feet and around her head,
+surging over the dead lovers, beating against the walls and roof, to
+die away, sobbing, sobbing like a weary child.
+
+Leonie, transfixed with ecstasy, stretched out her hands to catch the
+dying notes; and for that infinitesimal fraction of a second, when the
+golden sound crossed the boundary of human sense, felt as though she
+stood upon the edge of eternity.
+
+She turned to see the driver of elephants standing like a bronze statue
+outside the doorway; but speak she could not in that dim place fragrant
+with the loves of the past, neither could she support the divine pain
+alone, and picking up a rose and a sprig of bay from the marble, tucked
+them into the V of her bodice and walked out.
+
+But she did speak, to remonstrate, in the sweetest, most imperfect
+Hindustani in the world, when the man followed her at a quite
+respectful distance.
+
+"It is not safe for the mem-sahib to go alone," he answered.  "A wild
+animal, a man, a snake, might be in hiding.  The mem-sahib should have
+been accompanied by her guide."
+
+Thus spoke Madhu Krishnaghar, who had not one evil thought about, nor
+intent towards her, and who, having pushed the mandates of his religion
+into the background for this one night, was living in the intoxication
+of the actual moment.
+
+Leonie walked round the outside of the marble dream bathed in
+moonlight, occasionally stopping to ask a question of the man who
+followed.
+
+"Is it the tomb of an ancestor of the present prince?" she inquired
+haltingly.
+
+"No! mem-sahib! look at the lettering in black marble inset in the
+white; right round the tomb run those verses from the Koran.  A
+Mohammedan emperor built it--_I_ am a Hindu," the pause was scarcely
+noticeable as he added quietly, "as is everyone upon the prince's
+estates."
+
+She stopped in front of one of the four towers which stand at each
+corner of the marble terrace, and looked upwards.
+
+"I am going up," she said.
+
+"Nay! mem-sahib.  These towers are climbed only with a guide and a
+lamp.  They are not clean, they are not safe.  A snake, a pariah dog, a
+man might be on the stairs which wind round and round, and are as black
+as a night of storm."
+
+Leonie had climbed the few outer steps and was standing inside the
+door.  Not once had the untowardness of the whole proceeding struck
+her, nor had she given a thought to the fact that the man with her was
+a low-caste elephant driver, not fit to touch her shoe-string.
+
+She made no reply, and disappeared into the darkness.  You can see
+fairly well up to one half of the tower, then pitch blackness surrounds
+you, and you begin to feel cautiously with hands and feet for that
+reason; also because just about here your head begins to whirl owing to
+the stifling atmosphere, and the architect's corkscrew design.
+
+She had no idea that the man, alarmed for her safety, was following
+her, and she stopped and gasped near the top, wondering how much
+farther she had to go, and almost wishing that she had not started; and
+so black was it that she did not even see the white turban which was on
+a level with the step upon which she stood.
+
+Then there was a glimmer of light and more.  Presently it grew quite
+light and she staggered up the last few steps, and reeled on to the
+small round cupola of the tower unprotected by rails.
+
+Well for her was it that Madhu, divining the danger, raced up the last
+steps in one bound, reached her as she stood swaying on the edge, and
+drew her quickly, roughly back into his arms, where, forgetting his
+role of servant, his religion, caste and colour, he held her safe and
+crushed against his heart.
+
+She, with her eyes shut and her head spinning, remained there without
+understanding one word of what the man was saying.
+
+"And having held thee in my arms, how am I to let thee go," he
+whispered, with his mouth near the scented masses of her hair.  "Nay, I
+cannot, thou white, wonderful flower in a land of drought.  Behind the
+purdah will I place thee, hidden from all eyes but mine.  Thy
+body-woman shall not touch thee, for _I_ will be thy servant, and _my_
+hands will draw the lace from about thy bosom, and _my_ hands will
+perfume thee, and my love shall encompass thee until thou swoon upon
+the ground even at _my_ feet.  Waiting for thee I have known no woman,
+and I will have no wife but thee, and many sons shalt thou bear me.
+Yea! each year shall see thee bowed beneath the fruit of love, for I
+will not spare thee.  And thou shalt be honoured before all men; a high
+estate shall be thine, and a flood of jewels and gold and grain shall
+flow at thy small feet which I shall kiss.  And thou _shalt_ veil thy
+face, for I would kill him, _torture_ him who looked upon thee."
+
+Leonie opened her eyes and stared at the shimmering whiteness of the
+tomb, and she smiled and did not move, for the witchery of the full
+moon had fallen upon her.
+
+"Red!" she whispered, pointing to the dull glow of dead bodies burning
+somewhere near, and laughing till her teeth flashed between her scarlet
+lips.
+
+The man searched with one hand and found a small flat jewelled case in
+the folds of his turban, and opening it, with the long, deft fingers
+took out two pellets.
+
+He watched her as she lay upon his arm, and suddenly forced the pellets
+between her teeth, and himself laughed, as she grimaced at the bitter
+taste but swallowed them.
+
+He had not the slightest intention of doing her any harm, but with the
+whole of his vividly mature brain and virgin body, he delighted in the
+effect of the drug upon the woman he loved.
+
+There was no doubt about it that she suddenly awoke to the passion of
+the man looking down upon her, and responded to it.
+
+Wave after wave swept her from head to foot, causing her body,
+untrammelled by whalebone, to tremble against his, and he loosened the
+white cloak and let it fall, holding her pressed to him in her thin
+silk dress, laughing down at her, delighting in her eyes, her mouth,
+her throat.
+
+Handsome men are an everyday sight in India, but this man was as the
+gods, and Leonie, beautiful, drugged Leonie, looked at him from the
+corner of her eyes as looks the wanton, and laughed.
+
+"I will not kiss thee," he whispered, watching the colour sweep her
+face at his words, and smiling at the thudding of the heart beneath his
+hand.  "Nay, I will not bruise thee nor cause thee blemish until the
+purdah hangs between us and the world.  Look not at me thus-wise, and
+lift not the glory of thy lips, for I will not seize thee as a beggar
+seizes upon the _pice_.  I am thy king and thy slave, and I will carry
+thee to the gate.  Nay, move not thy body for fear I throw thee upon
+the ground and set my seal upon thee.  Lie still! and yet--why not, why
+_not_! perchance _has_ the hour struck."
+
+The man was crazed with love, and the girl intoxicated with the drug,
+and they were perched up there above the world alone, in the stillness
+of the Indian night.
+
+He hastily wrapped her in the cloak, and taking her into his arms, hid
+her face against his shoulder, and stood for a moment staring out
+towards the spot from whence had come the ill-omened jackal cry.
+
+"Not yet," he whispered.  "Not yet!"
+
+Sure-footed as a goat he carried her down the winding stairs out into
+the moonlight, and across the terrace, and up the marble steps, and
+placed her upon the wide marble seat, and sat sideways upon it behind
+her, unwitting of the miserable wretch who watched from between the
+cypress trees.
+
+Leonie sat quite still until the mystery of the place, or whatever it
+is, entered into the innermost recesses of her being; and she held out
+her arms to the light burning day and night above the dead lovers, and
+sobbed.
+
+Madhu Krishnaghar laid his hand upon hers on the cold marble of the
+seat, and lost himself in ecstasy at the tears which welled into the
+strange gold-green eyes and fell, then opening the collar of the white
+linen coat, he lifted a necklace of priceless pearls over his turban
+and passed it over the girl's head, holding it lightly until one end
+had slid down into the scented laces of her bosom where lay a cat's-eye
+on a golden chain.
+
+"Thou white doe," he said, "thou virgin snow," and added fiercely,
+"give me the rose from above thy heart, that I may press it to my
+couch."
+
+Obediently Leonie gave it, faded and warm, and looked at him with a
+strange little gleam of anger in her eyes; and he, understanding that
+the effect of the drug was passing, and that wrath maybe would follow
+love, led her by the hand down through the double row of cypress trees
+towards the gate.
+
+Alas! a twig cracked under the wretched _shudra's_ foot, snapping with
+the report of a pistol in the stillness of the night; and the man,
+feeling the hands of his gods upon him, fled like a hunted hare towards
+the gate.
+
+Madhu Krishnaghar, with his face one blaze of fury, stood still and
+called.
+
+"Rama," he called.  "Rama, hold," and as the wretched creature,
+forgetting the animal in his fear, sped past him, Rama curled his trunk
+swiftly about him and jerked him to a standstill.
+
+Useless to strive against that strength; useless to fight against the
+gods or raise his voice in shrieking prayer.
+
+For had he not looked upon the unveiled face of his master's woman.
+
+Slowly Madhu Krishnaghar led Leonie up the marble steps and stopped.
+
+"Thou dog," he said gently, "thou low-caste dog!"
+
+Then he drew Leonie into his arms and covered her completely with the
+heavy coat.
+
+But the man, submitting to fate with the terrible resignation of the
+East, let fly one last poisoned arrow.
+
+"The dog goes to his death," he cried.  "But behold, the shame of the
+lord is great, for have not the eyes of the low-caste dog rested upon
+the woman's face."
+
+"_Usko marro_!  Kill quickly!" thundered the son of princes, and turned
+indifferently away.
+
+But even as the elephant threw the man upon the ground, and placing his
+foot upon his head, tore him in twain, Leonie wrenched herself free,
+and flinging up her arms to the moon, laughed and laughed until the
+night echoed and re-echoed with the horrible sound, stopping only when
+the smothering folds of the cloak were thrown about her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+  "And thou shalt grope at noonday."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Jan Cuxson, hurt to the quick at Leonie's refusal to marry him, also at
+her rejection of his offer to accompany her upon her travels, shut his
+hurt away, and set his mind to the completion of his task.
+
+His suspicions had been aroused by the finding of that orange and
+silver scrap of _sari_ near the temple, when the ayah had presumably
+been left miles behind on the launch; and fully realising the futility
+of employing the methods of the West against the subtlety of the East
+he decided to pit native craft against native cunning.
+
+The only result of the investigation, however, was that Leonie's
+present ayah had been traced back via the Ranee's house to the days
+when she had been in the service of the Colonel-Sahib Hetth, V.C., but
+beyond that was a blank wall.
+
+She had suddenly left the Ranee's service to become body-woman to
+Leonie; without a single reference to the time when she had been nurse
+to Leonie as a baby.
+
+Who was keeping her silent, and why?  And what was she doing, and who
+was she with in the deserted temple in the jungle?
+
+Whose tool was she?
+
+Certainly not the Ranee's.  She was wrapped up in her duties toward the
+fast ageing Rajah, and her only son, who seemed much the same as other
+sons of princes.
+
+Having finally decided that the answer to the problem lay in the
+temple, to the temple he decided to go, more with the intention of
+having a look round than with any definite plan.
+
+The decision was made with the fixed though unspoken determination that
+if the solving of the problem should involve a sojourn of ten years in
+India, for ten years he would remain.
+
+He hired a guide and a coolie, both of whom looked exactly like any
+other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking
+being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not
+wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means
+of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats
+unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks
+of the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River to Kulna.
+
+If you want a few days' rest, or time in which to unravel a knot, pray
+take that means of locomotion; you can be dropped anywhere into a
+_nukur_ or native boat which will deposit you for a few annas on any
+island you choose, but don't do it if you are in a hurry, or are filled
+with a desire to see the lesser creeks, and the quite small ones, where
+tigers are supposed to sit in rows upon the water's edge, monkeys to
+swing across the water by means of the creepers interlacing the dark
+and dismal trees, and crocodiles to lie in tumbled masses waiting to be
+turned into portmanteau, dressing-case, or shoes.
+
+Cuxson's method and brain were rather like his gait; as he had said in
+Rockham cove, he was _slow_!  He could not and never had, even at
+Harrow, been able to run a hundred yards without becoming most
+uncomfortably blown; but he could walk anyone to death at a set
+plodding steady tramp, accomplishing twenty miles without turning a
+hair; while after a series of terrific spurts, and enforced periods of
+rest, his companions would give up dishevelled, sweating, and
+unpleasantly mortified miles away from the desired goal.
+
+Problems, mathematical or medical, were treated in just the same way.
+The more brilliant of his fellow-students would seize upon a pen, fill
+reams of paper and slap the result down triumphantly at the end of an
+hour, to find themselves later, and again with mortification at the
+bottom of the list, or not on it at all; whereas Cuxson, after hours of
+searching here and there in the convolutions of his grey matter, would
+light on a thread, a grain or a speck of dust which he would proceed to
+turn inside out, or tear to pieces; the outcome of which process would
+be printed at length in the _Lancet_ or some such-enlivening journal.
+
+So he lay on the long chair in the corner reserved for sahibs, and was
+not too uncomfortable, nor in any way uneasy as to the result of his
+investigations, although all that he had to build his hopes upon was
+the word of a native, and a piece of orange silk picked out in silver
+with the dust of a sundri breather adhering, which lay in his
+pocketbook with a ring of seaweed, and some glistening strands of tawny
+hair.
+
+The serang, meanwhile, parleyed with certain gatherers of _golaputtah_
+which is a special palm leaf growing in the Sunderbunds for the express
+purpose of thatching boats and _suapatti_ huts; and having discussed
+the ins and outs, and pros and cons of the situation with every male
+upon the boat, had transferred the sahib with his guide and coolie to a
+native boat, after a gratifying give and take in silver rupees which
+are so much nicer to handle than dirty notes.
+
+And an old priest made sacrifice of a black kid unto his god, having
+been apprised in the mysterious native way of the approaching arrival
+of the last person on earth he wished to see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+  "What hath night to do with sleep?"--_Milton_.
+
+
+"What a nuisance!"
+
+Leonie turned on her bed and frowned through the chick at the two girls
+who had ensconced themselves in long chairs on the verandah outside her
+bedroom.
+
+Broad-minded and big-hearted, she had tried to overcome the intense
+irritation which the Eurasian manner of speech invariably aroused in
+her.  Some get accustomed in time to the parrot-like monotony; some
+don't; and to the end of his days the young, immaculately groomed and
+turned-out assistant in Hamilton's will wonder why the beautiful girl
+with gold-flecked eyes had suddenly frowned, and placing the trifle
+intended for a wedding present upon the glass counter, had left the
+shop with an appallingly inadequate excuse.
+
+Fortunately for him the pukka European has not been endowed with the
+gift of hearing himself speak as others hear him.
+
+Like the broken flight of maimed birds over a lawn in the process of
+being mown is the Eurasian speech and intonation; with the inevitable
+dip in the middle, the rise at the end of each sentence, and the
+ceaseless clipping of syllables.
+
+And Leonie frowned as she lay under the mosquito netting awaiting the
+warning of the dressing bell, and even felt thankful to a crow which
+suddenly perched itself on the top twig of a fir tree, and shrieked its
+condemnation of the sunset, the star just above its head, and the
+chatterers in the chairs.
+
+In an effort to break through the overpowering lethargy which lately
+had fallen upon her at odd moments of the day, she lifted herself on to
+her elbow, only to sink listlessly back on the very hard bed.  After
+all, why worry over problems to which there seemed no answer?  Why fret
+over the silence of the man she loved when she had curtly refused his
+offer of companionship; for there always comes a time when mere man,
+subjected to the unsatisfactory daily menu of snubs and refusals, tense
+moods, and moody silences, will refuse it, and clear for a diet, which,
+although somewhat lacking in salt and spice, will have the advantage of
+being substantial, therefore satisfying.
+
+Also there was no doubt about it the social ostracism of Calcutta had
+followed her to Benares; she had not failed to notice that the people
+packing the hotel looked at her furtively, smiling spasmodically when
+caught in the act, and seemed ill at ease when left alone with her.
+
+Another thing which annoyed her intensely was the habit she had
+developed of peering into the shadows of the compound at odd moments,
+and listening for a sound she could not even describe to herself, and
+which she never heard; while through the blazing hours of the day, and
+the stifling hours of the night, like a black thread woven into a
+tissue of gold, ran the ghastly fear which had been with her since the
+day when a schoolgirl had taunted her, and to which she had given voice
+near the poinsettia bush to Jan Cuxson.
+
+She had _done_ Benares en tourist.
+
+She had watched the worshippers thronging the Praying Steps at dawn
+from the deck of a boat rowed slowly up and down the holy river; had
+enticed the monkeys with gram from the niches in the Doorga Kond, the
+world-famed Monkey Temple; gazed fascinated and with reverence at the
+firing of the pyres about the dead bodies shrouded in white or red
+according to their sex upon the Burning Ghats; averted her eyes
+steadfastly from the bloated bodies in process of being torn to pieces
+by crows or vultures as they floated on the soft bosom of Mother Ganges
+to everlasting peace; and had passed restful hours in the wonderful
+ruins of the Buddhist temple some miles outside the city.
+
+She had done all that others have done and will do, and still she
+waited, doing absolutely nothing and with no excuse for loitering in
+the hotel with its long broad verandah; learning much of the city's
+history from the charming manager who walks with a stick, and has the
+blue-green-brown shadow of the peat bog in his eyes.
+
+"Shoo, you brute!" said one, of the girls on the verandah, and
+continued speaking when the crow had flown farther afield.  "Well, the
+manager says we are not to go to the bazaar to-night on any account!"
+
+"Why ever not?"
+
+"Says there's a row or something brewing--something to do with the
+natives and their religion!"
+
+The girl with the reddish-brown hair put a final polish to the nails,
+which damned her everlastingly, as she spoke condescendingly of one
+half of her forbears; while the other, a _bona fide_ blonde as to hair,
+half opened the long sleepy brown eyes, which, combined with the shape
+of her silken-hosed leg from ankle to knee branded her even before she
+uttered a word.
+
+"Don't believe it," the latter replied.  "It's a do on the part of the
+guide to get more backsheesh; you simply can't trust these natives a
+yard.  I'll tell you what, though," she sat up with an energy
+surprising in one of her kind, "let's ask Lady Hickle.  She's _such_ a
+pet, and there's _nothing_ she doesn't know about the place, she's been
+here a whole month."
+
+Followed a short spell of peace in which Leonie raised her hand to
+summon her ayah squatting on the dressing-room matting, and put an end
+to the incessant chattering.
+
+But bolts do not wait upon the clapping of hands before they crash down
+upon your defenceless head from out the blue, and the one destined for
+her from all time hurled itself at her from out a wispy cloud of
+Eurasian gossip.
+
+"Oh! but we can't do that!" announced the peevish high-pitched voice.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Ma says we're not to be with her alone.  There's all sorts of weird
+tales going round about her.  Thought you knew.  They say she killed
+her first husband, and tried to stab someone in Calcutta with that
+dagger she wears in her hair; that she lives on the q.t. with a
+native--he gave her that gorgeous necklace of pink pearls; has been
+seen with him in the compound after dark--Ma watched--and she's
+positively dotty at the full moon.  Fact!  Mrs. Oswald told Ma that
+there's no doubt that she's quite mad at times."
+
+The blonde slid her slightly bowed, silken-hosed limbs to the ground,
+her face the colour of greenish putty through the superstitions of one
+half of her forbears.
+
+"Let's go and find your ma!" said she.  "It's full moon to-night."
+
+And after their departure Leonie sat very still on the edge of the bed,
+with one foot tucked under her, and the other bare and very perfect
+stretched down to the matting; the netting fell in folds behind her,
+and her eyes stared into the corner where a one time nameless, unshaped
+spook, having taken form and name at last, stood mouthing at her from
+the shadows.
+
+She started violently and looked down when her body-woman touched the
+arched instep with her wrinkled, dusky hand.
+
+Keenly intuitive, as are all the peoples of India, she had crept
+noiselessly across the matting and crouched at Leonie's feet in her
+desire to be near the beloved child in her distress.
+
+There was a heaven of love and a world of indecision in the monkey
+eyes, but not a trace of fear when the beloved child suddenly twisted
+the _sari_ from about the sleek head and pock-marked face and shook her
+violently by the shoulder.  Instead she rocked herself gently to and
+fro, crooning in the toneless cracked voice of the native woman who
+tends a white child and loves it.
+
+"Missy--baba, it's ayah!" went the tuneless song, "it's ayah--it's
+ayah--be not afraid, baba--baba--it's ayah--ayah--ayah."
+
+Over and over again she repeated the words with her eyes on the
+terror-stricken face above her.
+
+"Why!" said Leonie, frowning till her straight brows met as she pressed
+the palms against her temples, "why, you used to sing that in--in--you
+used to call me--in the name of all the gods, woman, tell me--help me,
+oh! help me to understand!"
+
+Great tears stood in the native woman's eyes, and she opened her mouth
+to speak, then turned her head slightly and looked towards the chick
+which had rustled; scowled, and bowing her head ever so little placed
+the palm of her hand against her forehead for an instant.
+
+"Won't you or _can't_ you speak?" said Leonie almost roughly, her voice
+ending on a sharp note which changed to a little bubbling uncanny laugh
+as she sat back on the bed holding her ayah at arm's length.
+
+She took no notice of the dressing-bell when it clanged throughout the
+building, nor of the swish of the water as it was heaved into the tin
+bath in the bathroom, but sat on with the plaits of her hair coiled
+like snakes on each side of her, and the whiteness of her bare arms and
+shoulders shining in the light from the bathroom.
+
+"Ayah! ayah!" she said in a dull sing-song sort of way, "do you know
+what they say?  Do you know what they think?  They think, they say I'm
+_mad_!  And do you know I think I am.  Sometimes there's the sound of
+drums in my brain, great big drums beaten by giants, and sometimes the
+sound of bells.  And the sound of the bells is hot, it burns great
+scars on--on--and there are hours for which I can't account, and cuts
+and bruises on my feet and--and----"
+
+Very quietly the native woman rose, and passing one arm behind the bare
+shoulder drew a hand across the low broad forehead, singing in her own
+tongue so softly as to be almost inaudible.
+
+"I dream of blood, ayah," went on Leonie, "so often--so often--it is
+warm to the fingers and drops so--so slowly--and----"
+
+The ayah pressed her fingers a little as she drew them behind the ears
+to the nape of the neck, and raised her voice ever so slightly in the
+Vega chant she had learnt as a lullaby.
+
+"The women," she crooned, "that are lying on a bench, lying on a couch,
+lying in a litter; the women that--are--of--pure odour--all--of them
+we--make--sleep!"
+
+The cracked voice sank suddenly as her child's face softened and
+relaxed, but the dark hand passed to and fro ceaselessly above the eyes
+and down behind the ears.
+
+"It walks so softly, ayah--it's--it's in that--corner now--look! can't
+you see--its--its eyes--and the small--light--and she is--she is
+calling--calling--just as she--has--has--always----"
+
+The tawny head fell backwards on to the white _sari_ picked out in
+coloured silk, pulling it away from the head, and the marriage dower of
+thirteen silver earrings in the left ear, and the turquoise studded
+nose ring which shone dully in the dim light.
+
+"And it's dark--it's--quite----"
+
+Leonie slept, and her neighbours in the dining-room went through
+certain anatomical gymnastics such as lifting the eyebrows, shrugging
+the shoulders, and pursing the lips, all of which are supposed to
+denote suspicion; while the native woman kept guard behind the reed
+blind through which she watched a figure clothed in spotless white
+flitting among the shadows of the trees.
+
+When those shadows marked the hour of midnight she sprang quickly to
+her feet.
+
+With one violent uncontrollable movement, Leonie had risen to her knees
+with the tips of the fingers of one hand against her lips and her eyes
+slanting sideways towards the window near her bed.
+
+"Hush!" she whispered.  "Listen!"
+
+Very softly, very sweetly there fell upon the night air the single
+stroke of a temple bell.
+
+Once it fell, and twice, and yet again.  And as it stopped the night
+was filled with the dull faint throbbing of many drums.
+
+Calling! calling! calling!
+
+
+Hidden in the shadows close to the reed blind, Madhu Krishnaghar
+watched the girl with intent half-shut eyes as, outlined against the
+dim light from the dressing-room, she twisted the heavy plaits of hair
+about her head, pinning them with the diamond hilted dagger; then
+stripping her flimsy garment from her, lifted the sheet from the bed,
+and twisted it deftly about her waist; watched her as she mechanically
+took a white _sari_ embroidered in silver from the ayah, and without
+hesitation folded it in true native fashion about her body and small
+head.
+
+The light of his religion flared into a flame of love and passion
+almost uncontrolled when Leonie, lifting the chick, stood by his side
+in the full light of the moon, with a smile of welcome on her lips, and
+the light of unholy knowledge in her eyes.
+
+Quite close to him she stood with one hand upon his arm, as he hung
+garlands of scented flowers about her neck, and then with a little
+beckoning gesture was gone; and the ayah crouching on the floor, beat
+her withered breast with her withered hand, a world of doubt in her
+monkey eyes.
+
+Like two white moths they flitted through the gloom and the hanging
+ropes of the banyan trees, down the narrow native path, and on through
+strangely empty streets and deserted bazaar to the Praying Ghats.
+
+The air beat about them with the incessant throbbing of many drums,
+calling to prayer--calling to sacrifice.
+
+Calling! calling! calling!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+  "Let us pass our lives at Benares, living by the banks
+  of the divine river, clad only in a single garment, and
+  with our hands uplifted over our heads."--_The Vairagya Sataka_.
+
+
+The Praying Ghats or Steps lay desolate in the light of the full moon.
+
+Hundreds of small lights twinkled and flickered before the countless
+temples; hundreds of fading flower garlands, hung about the temple
+doors or festooned about the gods--some of which are quite
+indescribable--perfumed the night air; and to the right and to the left
+the smouldering bodies on the Burning Ghats cast a crimson glow on the
+slow, silvery waters of India's most holy river.
+
+Of worshippers there was not one.
+
+Of the countless priests who crowd the steps at dawn there was but one.
+
+The mad priest.
+
+Naked save for a loin cloth, he stood as he always stands from dawn to
+dawn with feet wide apart and hands upraised to the heavens, outlined
+against some one of the Rajah's palaces which crown the top and stretch
+the length of the terraces like a mighty rampart between the holiness
+of the place, and the fret and traffic of the outer world.
+
+The holy man's arms, his legs, his emaciated body are covered with a
+fine ash powder, his long hair is matted with cinders and cow-dung, his
+mad eyes stare across the river into the infinite, at that which _we_
+cannot see, as he stands shouting unintelligible, maybe mad words,
+maybe not, to the glory of his goddess, Kali the Terrible.
+
+Was he born mad? no one knows!  What does he eat or drink?  A handful
+of rice, a sip of water from his glittering bronze vessel!  When does
+he sleep?  No one can tell you.
+
+Who knows! who cares!
+
+He is a holy man! the mad priest of the Holy City!
+
+He alone had taken no heed of the incessant resistless throbbing of the
+drums behind him in the city; neither did he take notice of the two
+white figures as they ran lightly, swiftly, hand-in-hand down the
+sunken, crooked, granite steps to a place between the praying rafts at
+the water's edge.
+
+For a moment Leonie hesitated with the water lapping her feet on the
+third step, then she turned her head slowly, and looked straight into
+the man's eyes which had been fixed intently on the nape of her neck.
+
+She gave a little sigh, drew out the dagger and let fall the plaited
+glory of her hair, and lifting the garlands from about her neck threw
+them out on to the waters; then with a native woman's movement pulled
+the _sari_ backwards from her head, and unwound it from her shoulders
+which gleamed like ivory in the moonlight.  Slowly, but without
+hesitation, even as the man dropped his shawl and long white garment
+upon the waters, she untwined the _sari_ from about her body, dropped
+it across a _suttee_ stone, and the dagger upon the step behind, and
+stood swaying gently with naught but the sheeting about her waist and
+limbs.
+
+The man, naked save for a loin cloth, stood like some splendid bronze
+statue two steps lower; straight as a pine was Madhu, the descendant of
+princes, with a width of shoulder most unusual in the native of India,
+and which served to emphasise the slimness of the waist.  Muscle
+rippled under the bronze skin of back, and chest, and limbs; and
+between the breasts gleamed the painted symbol of his religion, just as
+it shone between the brows.
+
+The lean face with its hawk nose, and curved mouth set close in a
+straight line, had the look of an eagle as he stood gazing up at the
+girl with burning eyes, in which fanaticism, heightened by the lapping
+movement of the holy water about his knees, warred with an overwhelming
+passion roused by the slenderness of the white girl's waist, the
+virginity of her beautiful breast, and the satin whiteness of her skin.
+
+And she placed her hand in his and followed him submissively down the
+steps.
+
+The waters bathed her ankles, her knees, her waist, as she made a cup
+of her two hands and drank of the holy water; the jackals yelled from
+the far shore, and the unseemly body of a dead youth floated past face
+downwards a few yards away.
+
+For some long minutes she stood with her face uplifted, then dipping
+her hands again into the water raised them and poured it upon her head
+until she glittered as though beset with diamonds.  Strange little
+movements she made to right and left with both hands, circles she drew
+on the face of the waters, and the man within an inch of her beautiful
+body stood with arms folded hiding his hard clenched hands.
+
+Raising both arms straight above her head she called aloud in answer to
+the spirit which moved her:
+
+"Flowing on, devoted to it," she cried in the soft words of India's
+holy writ, "by day and by night flowing on; I, of desirable activity,
+call upon the heavenly waters!"
+
+From the temple above the mad priest took up her words as he scourged
+himself in the ecstasy of his worship, and shouted:
+
+"Kali!  Kali!  Kali!"
+
+Which eerie solitary cry brought the pigeons out of their nests in
+thousands, to wheel and whirl madly in their fright before resettling
+in the facade of the palaces, of the niches and nooks of the temples,
+and the slender minarets of the Mosque of Aurangzeb.
+
+Bending backwards Leonie laughed up at the priest above, whose body was
+running blood, then descending the last three steps worn by the feet of
+thousands of pilgrims, and tilted by time and the resistless waters,
+flung out her arms and sank beneath the surface while the great plaits
+of hair floated towards the man and crept about his waist like loving,
+living arms.
+
+Three times she sank, and three times she rose, singing gently to
+herself, while great tremors shook the man from his turbaned head to
+his slender feet.
+
+Love or religion?  Who knows!
+
+Are they divided by much more than the breadth of a hair?
+
+Leonie turned and walked up the steps, the wet heavy sheeting hobbling
+her about the knees and ankles, clinging to her as the skin to the
+peach, her dripping hair making little pools of holy water upon the
+holy steps; until, standing upon the one where lay the little crumpled
+heap of her silken _sari_, she unplaited it and shook it out in the
+night breeze.
+
+She picked up the _sari_ and the dagger, and ran a finger along the
+razor edge, looking sideways at the man who moved not an inch when she
+drove the point of the blade beneath the skin above his heart until the
+blood ran; neither did she move when he dipped his finger in his own
+blood and marked her between the brows with the sign of Kali.
+
+The mad priest, frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting temple
+roof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecent
+noise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body to
+pieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; and
+Leonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white _sari_ picked
+out in silver against her breast, held out her hand, and with the
+sweetest, maddest laugh in all the world sped like a deer up the great
+nights of steps.
+
+And at the top when the man, moving swift and as surefooted as a buck,
+closed in upon her, her heavy drapery folded itself soddenly about her
+ankles so that when she essayed to save herself she twisted round and
+fell backwards.
+
+Her mouth quivered in a smile, and her eyes, like stars, flashed back
+into the flaming ones so near her own as the man, lost to all but his
+consuming love for the girl, bent above her, and with slender hands
+crushed her back against the edge of the steps until the skin of her
+shoulders was torn and bruised.
+
+"As the creeper!" he said, whispering the words of the Vega hymn with
+his eyes staring straight into her eyes.  "As the creeper has
+completely embraced the tree so do thou embrace me, that thou mayest be
+one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+He smiled softly as she half raised her arms and whispered to her, the
+words sounding like a summer breeze blowing upon the hill-top.
+
+"As the eagle, flying forth, beats down his wings upon the earth, so do
+I beat down thy mind, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
+mayest be one not going away from me!"
+
+And his delicate finger-tips pressed about her temples as he whispered
+to her.
+
+"As the sun goeth at one about the heaven--and--earth here, _so do I go
+about thy mind_, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be
+one not going away from me!"
+
+Slowly he bent still closer, and gently put one hand upon the gracious
+curve of her slender throat; and Leonie, wanton, seductive, bewitched
+Leonie smiled as she too whispered in the tongue of India's holy writ.
+
+"Let yon man love me; being dear to me let him love me; ye gods send
+forth love, let yon man burn for me.
+
+"That yon man may love me, not I him at any time, ye gods send forth
+love, let yon man burn for me!"
+
+The silence which followed was pierced by the call of the holy conch
+shell, so low, so sweet, to prayer, to sacrifice.
+
+Those who have not heard that call can never understand, those who have
+heard will forgive this feeble description of the intoxicating,
+soul-shattering, maddening sound.
+
+Soft and sweet it will steal insidiously into your ear, your brain, and
+the whirlpool of your senses until you stand rooted in ecstasy in a
+flooded field of sweet desire.  Rising swiftly and shrilly it will tear
+like racing waters at the ramparts we and our forefathers, have
+assiduously and mistakenly built around our inner selves; built until
+you and I and our neighbour have been metamorphosed through the ages
+from that mighty thing which went forth and took exactly what it
+wanted, to the almost shapeless slug form which, in the peace times of
+the present enervated century, contentedly eats lettuce in the damp
+seclusion of an overturned flowerpot.
+
+Yes! that call will pull those ramparts to pieces about your feet; and
+at the last indescribable, insistent scream of triumph which sears your
+brain and soul, it would be wise to be on the look out, and to keep a
+strong hand upon the vows you may have vowed, and upon those of the
+commandments you may not already have broken; because at that strange
+seductive sound the solid chunks of love, honour, chastity and right
+thinking; everything, in fact, that is in any way decent and above
+board is likely to break into a thousand infinitesimal, unconsidered
+atoms, and be blown broadcast by the wind of indiscretion.
+
+Leonie lay still, unconscious of the sound and the subtle change
+creeping over the man who bent down to her, and who, high caste,
+over-educated, overstrung, aflame with love and afire with the
+sensuality of his religion, slowly tightened his hand upon the gracious
+curves of the slender throat.
+
+Years ago Kali, his dire deity, had been outraged by denial in her
+desire for sacrifice, and since then, in her wrath, the black goddess
+had scourged the land with plague, pestilence, famine, and earthquake.
+
+Truly sacrifice of goats and buffaloes had been made until the altars
+and the courts of her temples ran blood; offerings had been made to her
+priests of grain and jewels, yet had she continued to whip the land
+until thousands died of hunger and disease.
+
+Why should not his hand bring the long-desired and long-sought peace to
+his well-loved land, and what more fitting place and time for sacrifice
+than the steps of the Holy River, under the light of the full moon
+which is Kali's lamp?
+
+Ah! and why should he not have his earthly reward in love, one short,
+full hour of the delight he had denied himself, and then, even upon the
+_suttee_ stone, that little memorial of the burning alive of the young
+widow upon the funeral pyre of the beloved husband, drive the diamond
+hilted dagger through the soft breast in worship of his god, and
+through his own heart that he might follow his beloved quickly as she
+passed to Paradise.
+
+Yes! sacrifice of the woman he loved that his god might be twice
+pleased.
+
+He was crazed with the delirium of his religion, mad with the call of
+the senses lashed to frenzy by the restraint which had been unnaturally
+forced upon him throughout his life; his eyes had the look of the eyes
+of those gods who spy down upon you from the shadowy corners of India's
+temples, and his nostrils dilated as he touched the dagger in her hand.
+
+Only for a moment!  For even as he touched it the single beat of a drum
+fell heavily upon the air, causing him to sit back on his heels with a
+smile upon the full curved lips, and a light of sudden understanding in
+his eyes.
+
+There was more toward than a mere sacrifice!
+
+The Holy City was, and had been for days, in a positive ferment of
+religious excitement; the bazaars were thronged with pilgrims who, by
+boat and train and on foot, had hurried to the city of a thousand
+temples.
+
+Something unusual was in the air although no one could clearly explain
+what it was; something was to happen although no one could name the
+hour or the day!
+
+Rice, and flowers, and jewels cemented with blood had been thrust into
+and pressed down until they completely filled the great crack which had
+suddenly appeared before the altar of the oldest and most venerated
+image of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction, in the Holy City; and the
+foreigner had been warned not to place his profane foot within the
+precincts of the city upon this night of the full moon.
+
+The native laughed as he sprang to his feet, standing bare and
+exceeding beautiful beside the indescribable graven images; and he
+laughed as he searched in the folds of his turban, and having found the
+pellets bent down and pressed them between Leonie's teeth, then jerked
+her to her feet, steadying her with his eyes.
+
+He flung her back against the kiosk wall, and encircling her with his
+arms drove them fiercely down and against her as he met his splendid
+teeth in the whiteness of her shoulder--in love; and taking her hand
+sped with her to the inner places of the city, shouting as he ran in
+the frenzy of his religion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+  "Neither let her take thee with her eyelids."--_The Bible_.
+  "And making a tinkling with their feet."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+The bazaars were moving in one solid mass in the direction of, but not
+to, the Cow Temple.
+
+For hours the endless streams had moved inch by inch through the narrow
+streets lined with shops and gaily painted houses, towards the heart of
+India's Holy City.
+
+Young women and old, young men and old, children, fakirs and holy men
+pressed patiently forward, impelled and called by some mystic summons
+they could not explain.
+
+There was no pushing nor striving, neither was there laughter nor any
+kind of merry-making, although a flower garland hung around every neck,
+although the multi-coloured raiment was of the best and cleanest and
+brightest, and the different marks of the different religious sects
+shone as though fresh painted between the eyes and upon the face and
+body.
+
+The holy cows walked slowly with the people, hung with garlands and
+painted on the face and sides; holding up the traffic as, unafraid,
+they snuffled their velvety muzzles in the unguarded baskets of grain,
+and pushed their way unconcernedly and by holy right across the human
+stream into the Cow Temple as they passed the ever-open door.
+
+There was certainly no pushing nor striving to get one before the
+other, but underneath the calm pulsated a certain restrained
+excitement, to be read in the light of the thousands of eyes, and the
+extraordinary spasmodic, almost uncontrolled, movements of the delicate
+dusky hands.
+
+Mothers would suddenly jerk their children up into their arms and press
+their little faces against one of the thousands of tiny shrines, where
+the gods sit all day and all night behind the bars through which are
+thrust offerings of flowers, of food, of jewels.
+
+Men would suddenly strip themselves of all except the loin-cloth and,
+casting their clothing at the feet of some holy man, proceed calmly
+upon their way.  One out of a number of beautiful, fragile girls, with
+cast-down painted eyes and half-veiled face, for no apparent reason
+would sidle up against some man; rest for one moment against him, and
+continue with him upon the road, his arm about her, crushing her body
+to his; and the drums throbbed, and the horns screamed in and around
+the temple of their goddess.
+
+Yet one did strive, and, heedless of rebuke, did push her way
+ruthlessly through the throngs, slipping on the greasy pavement covered
+with refuse and cow-dung; sliding, ducking, squirming her way in and
+out, breathless and dishevelled, with a simple brown _sari_ slipping
+from about her sleek head and pock-marked face.
+
+Her monkey eyes flashed this way and that in search of something or
+someone she could not find; her withered hands beat her withered
+breast; the sweat streamed down her face until at last the crowd gave
+way, and looking upon her as one mentally afflicted, helped her
+stumbling passage up to and through the temple gateway.
+
+Priests stood at the entrance to the outer court of the temple.  They
+did not stand there, as do the ushers in the West, in order to keep the
+riff-raff, those humble, poverty-stricken children of God, from
+occupying the plush-covered seats in His House; but knowing the
+intimate connection between religion and the senses, and the limited
+space of the court of sacrifice and the temple itself, they stood there
+in order to keep a finger upon the pulse of that mass of humanity's
+passions.
+
+The full moon flung her silver on to the stained worn flags of the
+roofless court; hundreds, thousands even of tiny wicks in tiny
+earthenware saucers flickered in the niches and on the outer edge of
+the walls; hundreds of torches flung a smoky veil around the restless
+figures passing in and out of the narrow entrance, and over dark heaps
+which lay at the foot of the walls and in the corners.
+
+Black heaps which, lay upon dark carpets, heaps big and small which
+seemed to move, around which hung an overpowering, sickening stench of
+blood.
+
+Heaps revealed when touched by the fluttering drapery of some
+worshipper to be the decapitated bodies of goats and bullocks lying in
+their blood, and from which would rise the millions of ever-moving
+flies which had given them a semblance of life in the torch-light.
+
+Millions of flies, bloated offences, which settle for a second heavily
+on your face or arm and fly slowly back to their feasting.
+
+It had been a day of stupendous sacrifice, and the place ran blood.
+
+From the inner temple came the sweet never-stopping clang of a silver
+bell, as in one continuous stream the worshippers climbed slowly up the
+flight of steps, passed in, struck one note by swinging the tongue of
+the bell to announce their arrival to their goddess, and passed out;
+while babies of both sexes, naked save for a silver bead upon their
+rotund little bellies in the male, or a profusion of tiny bracelets and
+a nose-ring in the female, heaped the flower offerings in masses at
+Kali's feet.
+
+Kali!  Ah! formidable, terrible image graven in stone!
+
+Pictures, highly coloured and blatant reproductions which will shock
+your artistic sense, can be bought for a few annas at the native shops
+which swarm outside the temple walls; but it is probable, nay, it is
+certain that not a single one of the Europeans who may read this book
+will ever see the original goddess in all her terror, and all that
+inexplicable power with which she holds the Hindu multitudes in the
+palms of her black hands.
+
+Black, and crowned and heaped with jewels, she looks down at, or
+through, or over you with her slanting fish-shaped eyes.  Her small
+ears, her flat nose, her arms, her pendant breasts are smothered in
+priceless gems; a huge red tongue protruding through the stretched
+mouth hangs far down upon the chest, ready to lick up the flames of
+sacrificial fires; a magnificent tiara binds the black hair which
+streams in masses behind her small distorted body; rows of pearls,
+flower garlands, and a string of skulls hang about her short neck; one
+hand holds a knife, the other a bleeding head, two are raised in
+blessing, while behind her shines a sun of flaming tongues of fire, and
+over all is spread an umbrella.
+
+Yet it is not the horror of the repulsive physique hewn in stone which
+holds you breathless before her; you know it is stone you are looking
+at, just as you know that the Sphinx is stone; but as with the Sphinx
+you feel the life of centuries throbbing through the carved monster;
+you feel that its breath, which is about you, is the wind which has
+swept across the desert places and teeming cities of the East; you feel
+that the eyes which are upon you have seen all things; in fact you are
+almost mesmerised by the force of ages into falling upon your knees in
+worship, before you suddenly wrench yourself violently round to face
+the sun outside the open door; and even as you do it involuntarily put
+your hands to your neck, upon the nape of which, by the suggestion of
+unconfessed fear, you have felt the stealthy, longing, jewelled fingers.
+
+On this night the slanting fish eyes of the goddess seemed to look
+through the doorway, and to linger upon the exquisite figure of a child
+dancing upon the extreme edge of the terrace between the two flights of
+steps.
+
+Dancing!--hardly that, as she stood, her body swaying slightly in the
+whirl of her mixed emotions, and totally unconscious of four young men
+who, arms entwined, stood below, watching the beauty of her body and
+her movements with half-shut eyes.
+
+Her ankle-length, full muslin skirt swung this way and that, as she
+moved slightly from her bare, over-slender waist, which accentuated the
+wonder of the young bosom out of all proportion in any but an eastern
+maid of ten years.
+
+Jewels flashed in her delicate nose and ears, and on her slender
+fingers and parted toes, for was she not on the eve of her marriage,
+this little maid?  Who, finding herself upon this unwonted night, alone
+for the first time in her life, had broken purdah, with her senses
+strung by days and nights of never-ceasing preparation for her
+marriage; during which she had been massaged by skilful, cunning hands;
+bathed and perfumed, forced to dance, forced to over-feed; until roused
+to a pitch of terrible excitement by drugs and curiosity, and the
+religious ecstasy of all around her, she had crept out alone, and into
+the temple with the teeming multitude to dance for the glory of her
+goddess.
+
+Her little feet made patterns in the dust as she turned slightly, this
+child of ten, until her snake-like arms seemed stretched in invitation
+to the four pairs of burning eyes fixed upon the virgin beauty of the
+little body.
+
+Who noticed in all that crowd when four pairs of hands shot up and
+seized her about the knees, lifting her gently down, or who, in the
+tumult, heard the cry smothered in the muffling cloth of a white coat
+in a distant shadowed corner.
+
+And one dead body more or less in the morning, what does it signify or
+matter in a place which reeks of blood?
+
+And just as this happened, and just as a dishevelled pock-marked woman
+stole swiftly up the temple steps, every face turned in one direction,
+and wave after wave of indescribable excitement swept the multitude.
+
+And yet there was nothing, no sound, no sight to account for it; only
+the high priest, tall and terrible, with the face of a Roman emperor or
+a Jesuit, came from behind the altar and stood at the open door,
+looking first at the throngs and then at a mass of black cloud which,
+as is sometimes the way in India, had suddenly spread itself towards
+the east, and was slowly climbing the heavens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+  "The gods approve
+  The depth, and not the tumult of the soul."--_Wordsworth_.
+
+
+"What a frightful row the natives are making in the city," was the
+fractious comment of one heat-distracted tourist to another through the
+mosquito netting which divided the two beds.
+
+"Disgraceful!" peevishly assented the other as she turned restlessly
+upon the thin, hot mattress, and heaved the one thin sheet to the foot
+of the hot bed.
+
+A sharper note had topped the heavy murmur which, like the rumble of a
+distant sea, had beaten the air without ceasing throughout the night.
+
+A film operator would have said that a crowd had woken up; a London
+policeman, that a crowd was turning nasty, as the sharp note went
+crescendo right along, until it took the definite tone of thousands of
+human voices upraised in unrest of some kind.
+
+This way and that surged the multitude, bowing unconsciously before the
+gusts of passion which swept from every quarter.
+
+The fret of the thousands of feet upon the paving sounded a silky
+accompaniment to the strange throaty murmur of fast rising religious
+hysteria; sharp, uncontrollable cries stood out like steel pencilling
+against the velvet monotony of the throbbing drums; the never ceasing
+tinkle of rings, and clanking of bracelets and holy chains against the
+blare of the horns sounded as out of place as a child singing in a
+thunder storm.
+
+The high priest, with the face of Rome, with a beckoning gesture, drew
+towards him other priests.  Some also with the face of Rome, and some
+with the face of the field labourer; some, gaunt and stern; some, jolly
+and rotund; well, just like any gathering of clergy, of any creed, you
+can see any day, in any country of Europe.
+
+The chiming of the silver bell had stopped when the worshippers, upon
+the peremptory command of the priests, fled pell-mell out of the temple
+and down the steps to join the frenzied crowd; while from the direction
+of the Praying Ghats there arose a roar of voices as two slim figures
+sped swiftly up the narrow lane, which seemed to open of its own accord
+before them.
+
+The woman, clad from the waist downwards in one linen piece, came
+running swiftly, lightly, undisturbed, almost hidden in the masses of
+her hair blown before her by the rising wind.
+
+Her naked body gleamed in the mixed lights; one hand, thrust out
+through the hair, held a dagger with diamond hilt; the other was
+clasped in the hand of the man who ran evenly and steadily beside her.
+
+There was not apparently an inch of space to spare in all those narrow
+streets; but by the madness of religion which drove the packed humanity
+back against the walls, a way was made for her who appeared to the
+multitude as the long-promised earthly incarnation of the Goddess of
+Death.
+
+When she had passed, those who were against the wall remained there,
+standing crushed to death, supported by the indifferent neighbours who
+had helped to drive in their ribs; and those who had slipped to their
+knees in religious fervour, or by reason of the state of the street,
+also remained prone upon the ground, the mass of people treading
+indifferently upon their broken backs and necks, while the threatening
+heavens were rent with screams of physical agony and cries of sensuous
+delight.
+
+Straight up the steps ran Leonie, and into the interior of the temple,
+just as a priest, a lad, with his face twitching spasmodically, and
+calling upon his god, fell dead at her feet, smitten by the force of
+his religion.
+
+Leonie, throwing up her arms, laughed as she put her cut and bleeding
+foot upon the boy's neck--laughed until the place pealed and echoed
+with the unseemly clamour, causing the crowds outside, held only in
+check by the mental force of the handful of priests, to strain against
+the invisible hypnotic barrier, and cry to high heaven for a sacrifice.
+
+Then Leonie turned about and ran out on to the terrace, standing a
+ghastly, beautiful figure before the multitude; and only a pair of
+monkey eyes, in a pock-marked face, hidden by the deep shadows of a
+corner inside the temple, saw the high priest with _roomal_ in hand,
+creep stealthily up behind the girl.
+
+No one in the tumult heard the growling of the elements; no one noticed
+the clouds bent on enveloping the moon; no one but the pock-marked
+woman understood what was towards for the appeasing of the outraged god.
+
+"Blood!" screamed the tight packed ranks; "a sacrifice of blood!  Kali
+is hungry!  Kali is thirsty!  Give unto the Black Mother that which she
+demands!"
+
+Leonie flung up both arms and laughed, even as the high priest drew
+back one step, scowling at the averted sacrifice.
+
+"A sacrifice!" went up the cry from thousands of throats; "a sacrifice!
+a sacrifice!"
+
+Again Leonie flung out both arms, and, just as the _roomal_ was
+slipping over the small head, with the scream of a tigress whose cub is
+in danger, the ayah leapt straight at her beloved child, wrenching the
+knotted handkerchief from the priest's hand.
+
+A horrible cry of disappointed blood lust shook the very earth; drums
+beat, horns screamed, daggers flashed in the dense mass, and fingers
+met round many a throat.
+
+They were mad indeed the people, but none so mad as Leonie as she stood
+with feet apart glaring down at the ayah's sleek head, which she held
+by the hair, in one hand.
+
+So mad was she that the priests drew back as from one divine; all but
+the high-caste youth who stood unnoticed amongst them and who advanced
+one step as Leonie raised her face to the moon.
+
+"She of the full moon," she chanted, "was the first worshipped one with
+depths of days, of nights.  They who, O worshipful one, gratify thee
+with offerings, those well doers are entered into thy firmament!"
+
+To which the waiting multitude thundered a response.
+
+"A sacrifice!  A sacrifice!  A sacrifice!"
+
+Over and over again went up the cry as men and women and children fell
+foaming to the ground, "and conches and kettledrums, tabors and drums,
+and cow-horns blared."
+
+Then came a silence, deep, sinister, and foreboding; only for one
+second before it was broken by a gasp, the catching of the breath in
+ecstasy of thousands of mankind.
+
+And followed screams of pure delight as Leonie flung back her hand, in
+which gleamed the diamond hilted dagger, just as a terrific peal of
+thunder crashed upon the searing flash of lightning, which flamed from
+the dense clouds as they swept over and blotted out the moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+  "Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
+  I'd set my ten commandments in your face!"--_Shakespeare_.
+
+
+Leonie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the _gharri_ to
+take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her
+bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the
+manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it
+had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded
+her head and looked at him out of agonised, forgiving eyes.
+
+The hotel _en masse_, at least the feminine portion of it, had had a
+prior interview with the manager which had been _superlatively_
+unpleasant for him.
+
+Coerced by a force which was closely allied to the brute; almost
+shouted down when he essayed to argue in favour of the hounded girl;
+threatened by the immediate transfer of the entire visiting list to the
+books of a rival hotel, he had ultimately owned to defeat; and Leonie
+sat on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly into the denuded
+dressing-room, while the native staff, yea! even unto him who had done
+her no service, buzzed round in the vicinity of her door.
+
+Strange things had happened, things undefined, and therefore not
+capable of bearing the light of honest dissection or discussion.
+
+What _had_ happened during the night of rioting--so-called--in the
+city?  What had been the meaning of those white-robed figures which had
+fluttered near her door?  And oh! why had her faithful ayah been found
+on the edge of the river the morning after, stabbed through the heart?
+
+As if anyone in India with any sense at all _would_ make inquiries
+about the last event.
+
+All that and a lot more! and quite enough to slam the gates of heaven
+or the hotel upon any lovely woman on her own!
+
+Yes! but--did all _that_ really do the actual slamming?
+
+Not a bit of it!
+
+It was the most convenient excuse the womenfolk could find to hang upon
+the peg of jealousy which had been knocked into the wall of feminine
+conceit and bad intent, by the hammer of Leonie's beauty, and
+irritating indifference to both men and women, especially the former.
+
+Let any woman lure to her side some other woman's own particular bit of
+masculine property; poach successfully upon her understocked male
+preserves; and figuratively, maybe verbally, most assuredly positively
+if she live east of Blackfriars, the claws of jealousy will be
+sharpened upon her; _but_--ignore the bit of masculine property, pass
+it by on the other side, consider it as belonging to somebody else,
+leave the preserves severely alone, and vials of execration, anathema,
+and denunciation, which are all synonyms for the same thing, will be
+poured upon her because of her lack of the appreciative faculty.
+
+Fact!
+
+Very few women can see the difference between joyfully hoarding genuine
+antique pewter, and wearing a second-hand neglige.
+
+So Leonie was fleeing home via Calcutta, and she sat without movement,
+hating herself and the world, even the man who, having taken her at her
+word, had left her alone to stumble as best she could along the
+crooked, lonely road which would end, as far as she could see, in a
+padded cell.
+
+"How could you?" she suddenly cried aloud, and the natives made
+surreptitious signs, and withdrew to a certain distance out of respect
+to the disorder of her mind.  "How _could_ you leave me!  Didn't you
+_know_ that it is because I love you so that I would rather _die_ than
+let you share my curse?  But couldn't you have done _something_, tried
+to follow that clue, gone somewhere, oh! done _anything_ just to show
+that----!"
+
+The rumble of wheels cut her agitation short, and drew the native
+element closer to the door, in order that it should be quite near the
+mem-sahib when she appeared--with her purse in her left hand.
+
+And while she sat on her bed, and later on in the train, striving to
+break the mental thongs which bound her to some intangible stake, Jan
+Cuxson was sitting in the secret places of the jungle temple, striving
+to break the bonds of raw hide by which he had found himself fastened
+to a ring in the wall.
+
+As he struggled he speculated savagely upon that insensate sense of
+security, common to most Britishers, which had caused him to try and
+find the Hindu temple under the guidance of an unknown native.
+
+He mentally reviewed his journey from the boat to the temple, fighting
+through the tiger-grass, breaking through the delicate impeding
+branches of the sundri trees, crushing the sundri breathers under his
+heavy boots as he tramped behind the guide, having failed to notice,
+owing to the resemblance that exists between one ordinary native and
+the next, that the guide and coolie of the jungle were not the guide
+and coolie of the paddle boat.
+
+He remembered that once he had stopped dead and laid a detaining hand
+on the guide's shoulder, as through the darkening forest had come a
+cry, eerie as it wailed through the shadows, to be taken up ahead of
+them, and echoed and re-echoed until it became faint in the distance
+and died away altogether.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+The native had not hesitated.
+
+"The cry, O Sahib, Protector of the poor, of the jungle owl as it seeks
+its food!"
+
+Cuxson, unobservant for once, and anxious to get to the end of the
+trail again failed to notice that it was still far too light for any
+member of the owl family to be abroad.
+
+Also, when he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot
+strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect
+something which whizzed through the space where his head had been a
+second before.
+
+It is true he had questioned the guide as to the route they were
+taking, pointing out that it was not the one traversed in the _shikar_.
+
+To which the guide had replied that doubtless the _shikari_ had taken
+the sahibs many miles out of their way to ensure a big toll to the
+sahibs' guns, and those of the mem-sahibs.
+
+Jan Cuxson had accepted every explanation.
+
+Extraordinary is this complacent sense of security of the British male
+when he butts into the paths and customs of countries of which he knows
+literally _nothing_; and he had arrived at the temple all in good time.
+
+Silence, intense and rather overwhelming, had hung about the forbidding
+place which allied to the abomination of desolation had disconcerted
+him, and made him turn to the guide for further reference.
+
+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.
+
+She stood for a moment laughing silently, looking down upon him, and
+turning, ran swiftly across the flags to the block of fallen stones.
+There she paused and glanced at the white man bound to the wall with
+the light of battle in his eyes, before she disappeared, beckoning to
+the priest who followed as she ran down the passage of the gods, making
+obeisance before them as she passed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+  "The soil out of which such men as he are made
+  is good to be born on, good to live on,
+  good to die for, and to be buried in."--_Lowell_.
+
+
+Leonie lay motionless on the stained stone before the altar; her hair,
+pulled back clear from her neck, swept behind her head like a cascade
+of rust-coloured water to the floor; her hands were clasped between her
+breasts, and her great unfathomable eyes stared up into those of the
+stone woman who looked down at her and seemed to laugh with joy at her
+long coveted prize.
+
+In every corner black shapes danced; advancing, retreating, springing
+towards the roof and vanishing utterly.  The place seemed infested with
+goblins, or devils, things of untold evilness and vice, although, in
+reality, they were but the shadows thrown by the little lights which
+were like tongues licking the lips of darkness in sensuous anticipation
+of the coming feast of blood.
+
+The old priest stood looking up at his god with perplexity in his
+sunken eyes.
+
+Arrayed in snow-white garment, with long hair hanging down, he held the
+knife of sacrifice in one hand, and in the other the sacred _roomal_.
+
+The terrible picture shone softly in the light of the full moon which
+struck straight down upon the altar through a hole in the ruined roof.
+
+"Tell thy servant thy pleasure, O Black One!" prayed the priest,
+swaying slightly to and fro.  "Make him understand it the _roomal_
+shall be knotted about the neck of this white sacrifice, or if the
+knife shall draw a necklace of red about the white neck and upon the
+white breast.  Give me an answer, O Mother, that I may right the wrong
+of many moons ago.  A sign, a sign, O Mother!"
+
+As he spoke; and for no apparent reason, Leonie's hands unclasped, her
+arms opened and fell towards her sides, leaving the beautiful breast
+bare with the jewel in shape and colour of a cat's eye winking craftily
+with the cunning and knowledge of the sins of all ages, just above the
+heart.
+
+The priest shouted in worship, and his words, caught, echoed and
+re-echoed from the dome, drowned the sound of footsteps running at high
+speed across the flower-strewn floor.
+
+Madhu Krishnaghar, naked save for the turban which bound his handsome
+head and the loin cloth which girt the slender middle, sped like the
+wind to the rescue of his beloved.
+
+In the black shades of the jungle, understanding at last that for him
+there could be no life outside the life of the white woman he loved,
+and no happiness outside her happiness, he had raced Time down the
+jungle path, through the outer gates and temple door, pausing not for
+the fraction of a second; realising, as he ran, that upon his speed
+alone depended the life of his beloved.  And even as the priest flung
+back his arm with a scream of ecstasy, the knife was wrenched out of
+his hand from behind.
+
+O Madhu, you splendid heathen, who defied the anger of your strange
+gods for the love in your noble heart.
+
+"Ha!" said the old man as he swung round in fury; then he smiled and
+opened wide his arms.  "Thou!  O my son! _thou_!  Thou wouldst offer
+the great sacrifice thyself to our most gentle mother.  And art thou
+not in the right?  Thine has been the task and the toil, therefore is
+it meet that thou shouldst have the reward."
+
+He laid his hands upon the shoulders of the youth, who straightway
+gripped the veined old wrists and raised the withered arms high up
+above their heads, while their eyes met in a sudden-born, subconscious
+enmity, and the knife lay glittering along the wrinkled brown skin.
+
+Only for an instant, and Madhu let go his hold, and turning, stood
+looking down upon the jewel above the woman's heart.  As he looked, the
+thing, catching the reflections of the lights, shone strangely bright
+upon the snow-white skin, and the lust of blood swept him from head to
+foot.
+
+He longed to drive the dagger through the breast above the shining
+jewel; he craved to see the whiteness of the skin stained with red, to
+throw himself upon the still form and shut the dead mouth with kisses.
+
+He was mad with passion, intoxicated with the heavy perfumed air, drunk
+with the atmosphere of his surroundings, and his slim body shook as he
+ran the needle-point of the dagger into his own breast.
+
+He closed his eyes in the ecstasy of that pain which is twin to the
+ecstasy of desire fulfilled, and in their closing woke suddenly to the
+purity of his strange love.  He turned with a snarl and hit up the old
+man's hand as it almost touched the nape of his neck, and stretching
+wide his arms made a shield of his body between Leonie and the intent
+he read in the priest's eyes, just as a brick fell and split to pieces
+at their feet.
+
+"Linger not, my son," said the old priest fiercely.  "Behold! the rites
+have been performed, the chants sung, and the offerings made.  Drive
+the knife home, and give drink to thy mother of that which she loves.
+Hasten! for she is angry at thy slowness, and the very earth trembles
+at her wrath."
+
+But Madhu Krishnaghar looked straight back into the fierce, suspicious
+old eyes, and moved quickly towards the priest who, taken by surprise,
+retreated hurriedly.
+
+"Father!" came the words in the musical, steady voice.  "O servant of
+the Black One, I cannot, nay, I will not, for I love yon white woman
+with a love passing all understanding.  Nay, hearken!  A sacrifice
+there must be this night, and there shall be one.  Even me, O my
+Father.  Let it suffice, for behold is my love so great, that she, the
+slender white flower, seems but one with me.  Let her go, let her go,
+and lay me on the stone, warm with the life of her dear body, and drive
+the knife through my heart, that through my love peace may be made with
+thy god and my god!"
+
+The whole world seemed bound in a great terrible silence as the two men
+stood staring at each other in the soft silver light of the moon; then
+the old man smiled gently, with the cunning of all time in his eyes,
+and creeping close to his pupil spoke in the merest whisper; tempting,
+as have always tempted, those who desire to gain their own ends, and
+who justify all means as long as that end is gained.
+
+"Thou lovest her, my son.  The infidel white woman, the sacrifice long
+dedicated to thy god.  And why not, for thou are marked even with the
+mark which shows between the breasts like lotus buds.  But thinkest
+thou, O son of princes, O descendant of the great, that thou art fit to
+mate with her.  She is white, a daughter of the all-conquering race;
+thou--thou art black--a pariah--a dog--thou wouldst be whipped from her
+presence, thou high-born son of India."
+
+The old man never moved his eyes from the young face, and neither the
+one nor the other saw the great striped terrified beast which slunk
+past them and disappeared into the shadows, seeking protection in its
+terror.
+
+"But why shouldst thou let this woman, whom thou lovest, go?  Why not
+make sacrifice of love as well as life to the great one?  Behold is she
+soft and white and all-pleasing!  Why, therefore, should she not come
+unto thy intent neath the eyes of the Sweet One, while I make offerings
+in the shadows towards thy well doing; so that the Black One will be
+twice pleased."
+
+Of all the horrible temptations in that place of horror!  And where in
+the name of all the gods did the native, unshackled by convention or
+code, find the strength to resist?
+
+For while the priest whispered the young face was swept by a flood of
+conflicting emotions--which passed--leaving it as pure, as
+soul-stirring as the Taj Mahal at dawn.
+
+"No!  O Holy One!  I will not--I love her--I love her--I will not!"
+
+The words were firm and the young mouth like steel, and the eyes looked
+steadily back into those of the priest as the latter rushed upon him in
+mighty, inhuman wrath.
+
+"And I say that thou shalt, thou begotten son of evil.  I say that thou
+shalt encompass this woman with thy might, and then offer her in
+sacrifice to Kali, the Goddess of Death.  I say that thou _shalt_."
+
+It was a case of will pitted against will, for the old man knew that
+the younger would not dare raise hand against him for fear of
+everlasting damnation.
+
+And Madhu Krishnaghar girded himself for the battle by putting his love
+for the white woman in the forefront of his mind.
+
+And as they fought, desperately, with one last terrific pull which
+caused the hide to cut down to the wrist bone, Jan Cuxson wrenched the
+ring he had loosened from the wall, and stood swaying, sick with pain.
+Sweat poured down his face and bare chest, and blood flowed from his
+wrists while his burst finger-tips fumbled clumsily with the deep
+embedded thongs.
+
+"I did it--I did it," he kept on repeating savagely, as his knees
+trembled and his body turned cold in agony.  "I did it--I did it--God
+grant I am in time--in time."
+
+Free at last, smothered in blood, dragging his heavily booted feet with
+difficulty, he sought and found the broken blade, staggered across the
+floor, stooped, and entered the passage of the gods where the imprint
+of his beloved's bare feet marked the dust of ages.
+
+And Leonie lay quite still; to all appearance dead, with her open eyes
+turned back beneath the lids and her mouth half open showing her even
+teeth.
+
+Not a word passed between the two men as they fought for her, one for
+her life, the other for her death.  This way and that they moved; the
+one trying to escape from the direct range of the relentless
+will-power, and yet keep himself between the girl and the religious
+fanatic; the other striving to press his opponent back even to the
+altar stone.
+
+Like iron to a magnet Madhu's hand was closed about the dagger hilt,
+and try as he would he could not relax the grasp nor fling the knife
+far back into the shadows; neither could he keep his footing, for
+strive as he would the priest's magnetic power, developed and trained
+through years and years of study and practice, drove him back inch by
+inch towards the god who looked down upon them with her fish-shaped
+eyes.
+
+A glint of triumph shone in the eyes of the priest, and twisted the
+corner of his mouth as the heel of his enemy thudded against the stone
+upon which lay the white girl; and he concentrated every ounce of his
+strength for the last moment when, by sheer force of his will, the
+knife should be lifted and driven down, deep, even to the hilt.  And
+the white man hastened as best he could, reeling at every step, with
+blood streaming from his wrists and spattering upon the stones beneath
+the leering eyes of the gods.  Not one of the three heeded the low
+moaning of the wind as it swept past the temple and through the trees,
+to die away into a great, uncanny, unnatural silence, unbroken by sound
+of beast or bird.
+
+Fate feeling for her shears, and peevish through want of sleep maybe,
+or mayhap irritated by their obstreperous behaviour, jerked the strings
+which bound those marionettes called humans to her palsied old fingers.
+
+The old priest, misjudging the pull given to his string, in what he
+mistook to be his triumph, _laughed_.
+
+It is better to laugh last indeed, but oft-times it is best not to
+laugh at all, for who can foresee the particle of dust which may enter
+your indecently and injudiciously wide open mouth to choke you in your
+ill-timed mirth.
+
+Only for an instant did he triumph above his enemy, but for just that
+instant he loosened his will power; and Madhu Krishnaghar, sensing the
+relief, and whipped by the laugh to one final desperate effort of his
+failing powers, raised his hand and flung the knife far back to fall
+with a clatter in some distant corner.
+
+It was done.
+
+Youth had mocked at experience, life at death, love at opposition, as
+it has done since the beginning of time, and will do, let us hope,
+until the end.
+
+For as the knife hurtled into the shadows, Madhu bent swiftly and
+lifted Leonie into his arms, holding her in this his last moment of
+heaven upon earth, tenderly and firmly, as he glared defiance over her
+head at the priest.
+
+And he, understanding at last that he had failed, cast himself at the
+feet of his god who, in her fury, stamped with both her blood-stained
+feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+  "Greater love hath no man."--_The Bible_.
+
+
+There was a shout from the doorway leading to the secret places of the
+temple as Cuxson, covered with blood and dust, half-crazed with horror,
+paused for a moment as he took in the awful picture before him.
+
+Leonie, with her hair almost sweeping the ground, lay half clothed and
+seemingly dead in the arms of a native, whose face was a picture of
+triumphant love for all to see; and a wild-eyed priest beat his breast
+before the horrible image of the terrible, all powerful Goddess of
+Destruction.
+
+He sprang forward with another shout, which was lost in the shriek and
+crash of the raging elements.
+
+For even as he moved there was a terrific roar as of tons of exploding
+dynamite, and a shriek of wind as it tore through the building, blowing
+out the little flickering lights, leaving the place pitch black save
+for the steady light of the full moon.
+
+Then he swayed like a drunken man as the floor rose in a great wave and
+yet another, heaving the flags this way and that, cracking and
+splitting in every direction as it subsided.
+
+"Leonie!" he shouted, though no sound could be heard above the
+appalling din.  "Leonie!  Leonie!"
+
+He saw her lying in a pool of moonlight as though asleep, and near her
+knelt the native, with arms outstretched above her, sheltering her.
+
+There was a moment of complete dead silence, and then with a tearing,
+rending sound the dome and the temple walls split from top to base; and
+with a thundering crash the great block of stone upon which was carved
+the image of Kali the Terrible split in two, toppled over and fell upon
+the kneeling priest.
+
+Herds of screaming beasts hurled themselves through the riven walls and
+fled across the temple floor, fighting blindly to escape.  Monkeys in
+hundreds scrambled over the mounds of fallen bricks, chattering and
+calling like lost, frightened children; a tiger with one bound landed
+noiselessly a few feet from those two in the moonlight, half reared
+with a short coughing roar and bounded as noiselessly away.  And God
+alone knows what saved the three from instant death among the tottering
+ruins.
+
+The power of Love perchance.
+
+The son of princes sheltering the girl slowly, oh! slowly straightened
+himself, when a prolonged silence seemed to indicate the end of the
+greatest earthquake that ever swept the Sunderbunds Jungle.
+
+Blood streamed from the side of his head, battered in by a broken
+fragment of the high altar that had been hurled through the air; his
+left shoulder was in splinters, crushed by the collapse of the roof
+which must have killed Leonie if he had not covered her with his body;
+blood spouted from some great severed artery in the arm which seemed to
+hang by a thread from the splintered shoulder; yet was his face aglow
+with light and love, and his eyes afire with happiness as he raised a
+tawny tress of hair and pressed it to his lips.
+
+He was dying, quickly, yet he turned his head and smiled at the sound
+of Jan Cuxson's boots scrambling over the impeding heaps of stone.  For
+one second only the torture of the sacrifice required of him flared in
+the soft brown eyes; and then in the pride of his great race, and with
+an effort of will beyond all telling, he put his unbroken arm round the
+woman he loved so well, lifted her, got somehow to his feet, and
+walked, aye! walked steadily across the few yards which separated him
+from the white man.
+
+Cuxson, not realising his terrible plight, with eyes only for the woman
+_he_ loved, wrenched Leonie from his hold and swept her from head to
+foot with frantic eyes.
+
+"What have you done to her?" he demanded fiercely.  "Before the
+earthquake what did you do to her?  Tell me--or by God I'll----"
+
+He stopped the bitter words in time to save himself from everlasting
+remorse.
+
+For Madhu Krishnaghar suddenly straightened his battered body, and
+looked the white man in the eyes.
+
+"She is safe, O white man, safe and unharmed.  Take her, keep
+her--carry her by the--the short road without the--the temple
+gates--to--happiness, _I_ give _her_--to--you--because _I_--I
+love--her--for ever!"
+
+There was a moment's terrible silence in which the two men stood
+divided, yet united, in their great love for the one woman.
+
+The native of India put his hand to his forehead and salaamed before
+the woman for whom he had sacrificed all, then turned slowly around
+towards the place where the image of his god had so lately stood.
+
+"Kali!" he called, and his young voice was as the clashing of golden
+bells at sunset.  "Kali!  Mother of all--I come!"
+
+And unwitting of the great reward awaiting those who attain everlasting
+peace through the victory of the greater love, he crashed face
+downwards, dead, upon the flower-strewn floor, and passed for ever into
+the safe keeping of the one and only God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+  "When the day breaks and the shadows flee away!"--_The Bible_.
+
+
+Jan Cuxson lifted Leonie's face to the light of the moon, and caught
+his breath at the sight of the turned back eyes and drooping mouth.
+
+This was the outcome of it all!  _This_ was how she was left to him;
+saved from physical hurt but with her mind for ever bound by the will
+of yon dead priest.  Hypnotised, mesmerised, to be under the influence
+of the Goddess of Destruction until her death; maybe to pass her life
+in the security of a padded cell; she, his Leonie, his love, his
+wife-to-be.
+
+He crushed her in fierce despair against his heart as the ground moved
+gently under his feet, and prayed aloud to his God to bring the riven
+walls down upon them there in the moonlight, that in merciful death the
+awful fate of his beloved might be lifted from her.
+
+The only answer to the desperate prayer was silence and shadows
+enveloping them like a mantle, and he lifted his stern face to the
+radiance of the moon, with the light of battle in the grey eyes.
+
+"I will find a way out, dear heart," he cried, as he turned her face
+gently against his shoulder.  "There is a way and I will find it."  And
+he strode as hastily as the masses of fallen stone would allow him
+towards the door and the short path which would lead him to the water's
+edge and safety.
+
+As he skirted the half of the fallen altar which lay across the body of
+the priest, he paused for a moment and looked down upon the man who had
+won even in death.
+
+As he looked the fingers of the out-flung hands twitched, and a violent
+shiver shook the old frame.  Slowly, very slowly the gnarled old arms
+were gathered in under the breast as inch by inch the Hindu priest
+raised himself from the floor.  The lower limbs were hidden, crushed
+under the fallen stone, and the old head hung down between the
+shoulders, the grey hair tangled in a wreath of jasmin flower.
+
+He lifted his face, and the dim old eyes looked wistfully up into the
+grey ones staring down at him out of the shadows.
+
+"Thou hast conquered, sahib, thou hast conquered in love," he
+whispered.  "And she is safe, for behold my--my power--has gone--from
+her.  I--even I--have not obeyed, and my god--has destroyed me!"
+
+Lifting his voice he cried aloud and died.
+
+And as he died Leonie turned her face from the shelter of her lover's
+shoulder and closed her eyes, and opening them again laughed sweetly as
+she looked up into his face.
+
+"You, Jan, _you_!  Why--whatever has happened, and--why--wherever are
+we?"  And he looked down into the sweet face and laughed aloud, an
+exultant, ringing laugh which was caught and echoed and re-echoed from
+the dome until the place seemed filled with the sound of happiness.
+
+"There has been a bit of an earthquake, dear, and you got hit on the
+head by a piece of falling brick.  See, sweetheart," and he swept the
+masses of hair together and twisted it between her head and his coat,
+"turn your face this way until I have you safely out of here, it's nice
+and soft, and shut your eyes, darling----"
+
+"Yes! but," said Leonie, as she turned her face as bidden and closed
+her eyes with a sigh of great content, "but--but how did we escape?"
+
+"You were saved, dear!"
+
+"Saved!--from what?  By whom?"
+
+She tried to turn her head, but he held it pressed close against his
+heart.
+
+"From death--dear heart!"
+
+"And by whom--tell me--Jan--by whom?"
+
+Jan Cuxson paused a moment as he looked across towards the still figure
+of Madhu Krishnaghar stretched peacefully upon the ground.
+
+"By the whitest man that has ever lived, dear!--by him!"
+
+And he turned without another word and strode through the temple and
+out of the gates to the narrow way which led to safety.  And where the
+trees met in an arch above his head he stopped and looked back, and
+Leonie, turning her face, passed her hand wonderingly over the tousled
+masses of her hair and the silken drapery about her body.
+
+"Where are we going to?  Where are you taking me?"
+
+He shifted her completely into his left arm, pulled at a golden slender
+chain round her neck with his right hand, caught it in his strong white
+teeth and wrenched it in two.
+
+And he answered her as he flung the jewelled cat's-eye far out into the
+jungle.
+
+"To Devon, beloved, to Devon and happiness!"
+
+And as he closed her red mouth with kisses the earth shook gently under
+his feet, and the temple, with a terrific crash, caved in; burying for
+ever the dead priest, the broken image of Kali, the Goddess of
+Destruction, and Madhu Krishnaghar, son of princes, her splendid Indian
+lover.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Leonie of the Jungle, by Joan Conquest
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