open palm.

And Jan Cuxson held his breath when she quietly sidled round the block
of fallen masonry, and standing in a moonray glanced at him from the
corner of her eyes. Hung with flowers, she looked like a bacchante,
with one beautiful arm and shoulder showing bare through her mantle of
tumbled hair.

And his eyes caught the shadow of the priest cast by the passage lights
on to the floor as he stood hidden by the fallen stones, and he kept
still, but he called to his beloved, striving by his will to break her
chains, and truly at the sound of the loved voice the frozen horrors of
her face seemed to break like ice-floes before the sun in spring.

"Leonie," he called gently, "Leonie, come to me, come here to _me_!"

Her eyelids suddenly closed upon the staring gold-flecked eyes; her
mouth quivered in a little smile as she let fall the flowers about her
bloodstained feet and ran swiftly across to Jan; kneeling she touched
his face gently with her finger-tips, and stretched her hands across
his shoulders towards the thongs which bound him to the ring in the
wall.

Her hair fell upon him as she leaned towards him, and a memory of the
day he had found her in Rockham Cove flashed across his mind; her
mouth, her beautiful scarlet virgin mouth had almost touched his when
the priest's power, closing down, jerked her back into the horrible
travesty of her sweet, gentle self.

She sat back upon her heels and laughed, and said one word in
Hindustani which is best translated as dog, although it means
infinitely more and worse; and having uttered it she smote him across
the mouth with the flat of her hand and rose to her feet.

She stood for a moment laughing silently, looking down upon him, and
turning, ran swiftly across the flags to the block of fallen stones.
There she paused and glanced at the white man bound to the wall with
the light of battle in his eyes, before she disappeared, beckoning to
the priest who followed as she ran down the passage of the gods, making
obeisance before them as she passed.

CHAPTER XLIX

"The soil out of which such men as he are made
is good to be born on, good to live on,
good to die for, and to be buried in."--_Lowell_.

Leonie lay motionless on the stained stone before the altar; her hair,
pulled back clear from her neck, swept behind her head like a cascade
of rust-coloured water to the floor; her hands were clasped between her
breasts, and her great unfathomable e