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 li