“Lie down!”

He lifted the netting and pointed to the bed.

As he towered above her the scarlet mouth in the uplifted face was on a level with his shoulder, as she smiled distractingly and raised her hands palm upwards in a little supplicating gesture.

“My Lord!” she whispered.  “My Lord!”

The temptations of all the ages, and the overpowering passion of his own glowing East rose about him like a flood; he shook from head to foot as she laid herself down and drawing the sheet about her whispered again, “My Lord!”

They were alone in the jungle, and his will was hers; she was as a bit of wax upon which he might imprint his seal; there was no one to say him nay if he should draw her unto his intent.

And he loved her.

Yes! he loved her, and because of the overpowering strength of this love he knelt beside her and placed his fingers upon her temples.

“Sleep, beloved,” he whispered, “sleep—­the women that are of pure odour—­all of them—­we—­make—­sleep.”

And Leonie slept peacefully and undisturbed until the dawn, because Madhu Krishnaghar, with his face buried in his arms, who lay across the threshold of her bedroom, was one of the splendid type that India breeds—­an Indian nobleman.

CHAPTER XLVI

  “Out of the abundance of the heart,
          the mouth speaketh.”—­The Bible.

One thing after another happened to prevent Leonie from continuing what remained of the journey during the cooler hours of sunrise.

One coolie strayed and was not retrieved until the other two men were hoarse from shouting, then another ran something into his foot, which was only extracted after a mighty fuss, and something akin to a major operation, skilfully performed with the bearer’s knife and a few thorns plucked from the bush.

Last but not least, as they were on the point of starting, a snake about two yards long had blithely wriggled its shining length across their very path; and nothing short of hours of prayer and offerings to their gods would move the coolies along that path after such a sign of ill omen; no! rather than budge an inch they would have laid down in their tracks and died of snake-bite, or a marauding tiger; and Leonie was far too wise a traveller to lose sight of her luggage for one second—­in India.

Although she had no idea why she was in such haste, she inwardly fretted at the hours lost, but passed them with outward patience in the shade of the jungle trees; eating what was brought her, and sleeping away the afternoon stretched on a rug; unconscious of the fact that her bearer sat behind her head, fanning her face gently, and with the lightest and deftest of fingers removing the various insects, long and short, fat and thin, smooth or horny, which seemed to have taken unlimited return tickets for the journey over her body.