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 ve