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 h