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 wh