“You have not seen the Fort of Agra, the sad, dead palace.  There, in the dungeons, is a beam stretched across the hidden wells and marked with the fret of a rope.  Many a beautiful woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or wrists, and her body dropped through the well into the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her master and her executioner.”

“Oh!—­oh! don’t——­”

“Twice,” continued the quiet voice relentlessly, “the sacrifice has been averted, but now the hour has come.  Thou art here alone, none knowing, and I—­I alone can save thee.  And will not Kali, our mother, raise her hands in blessing upon us united, even as we were united when babes, and being appeased, lift the curse from off the land.  She is soft and gentle, treading lightly upon life’s stony paths, Uma so sweet, Parvati, daughter of the eternal snows.  Oh! woman, say that thou wilt be my wife, for behold, are we not marked with the same mark which——­”

“Mark? What mark?” Leonie questioned abruptly, looking back over her shoulder, her mouth perilously near to his as he bent his head slightly towards her; and there fell a little silence in which the thudding of his heart could be felt against the silk thread of her jersey.

“Between thy breasts, thou white dove, hast thou no mark?”

Leonie tried to speak, and failing, nodded her russet head.

“Even so, it is the mark of Kali which the priest cut upon thee and me, uniting us all those moons ago in the Mother.”

She turned completely round and faced the man with a little look of wonder in her eyes.

“I have so often wondered about the—­the little mark,” she said.  “But you see—­how could I marry you—­I could not, do not—­love you!”

“Love,” he said quietly. “Love!  Thou wilt love me, aye! thou wilt love me in thy waking hours, even as thou wouldst have loved me in thy sleep if—­if the gods had not intervened.”

“You—­have—­been with me—­in—­my—­sleep?” she whispered.

“When thou didst walk in thy sleep!”

CHAPTER XLVII

  “For jealousy is the rage of a man;
  therefore he will not spare in the day
  of vengeance.”—­The Bible.

Suddenly she was struck with the full horror of those lost nights in which the man beside her had been her companion.  She stretched out her hands and turned them over this way and that, scrutinising them with horrified eyes.  She touched her mouth with her finger-tips and drew them with a shudder down her neck, and her breast, and her waist, as she looked upon the beauty of the man before her with his passionate mouth and gleaming eyes.

“You—­you have been with me when I have walked, unconscious in my sleep; you have——­”

He interrupted her hastily, divining her thoughts.

“Yea!” he said, “I have been with thee when, under the influence of my god, thou hast walked in thy sleep.  I have watched over thee and helped thy cut and bleeding feet over the roughness of the roads, as I would help them over the perilous road of life.  I have not touched thy hand save in support; I have not touched the glory of thy mouth with my mouth, because thou couldst not give me thy consent so to do!