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 very tips of her fingers passed down the side of his face.

“And thine are like vultures with drooping head, and thy nose——­”

“Thine,” he interrupted, twisting his head to evade the exquisite agony of her touch, “is like a sesame flower, and thy nostrils even unto the seed of the barbarti, and thy lips—­oh! thy lips are the bandihuli flower.”

He raised his face with agony in his eyes, closing them as she lightly touched his mouth.

“Thy mouth is even as the bimba fruit, which is warm and soft, and thy chin is like a mango stone, and thy neck like unto a conch shell which I encircle with both hands.”