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 th