The occidental mantle, made of honest homespun, uniform in colour, and with a wide hem to allow for shrinkage; but guaranteed to stand all weathers and to last a lifetime.

He might have been flicking a fly from his sleeve, so indifferent was his answer in his blindness.

“The white man?  He is bound to the temple walls, awaiting the woman he allows to walk unveiled and alone throughout India.”

“Ah!” said Leonie, with that little hush in her voice which is heard in the mother’s when she first sees her new-born babe.  “I am sorry,” she continued quietly, “so sorry I have not been honest with you.  I cannot marry you because——­”

She stopped and turned as with a sound like the tearing of silk a flock of birds suddenly flew from the tree tops and whirled away into the night.

“Because? Because, woman?”

For a moment Leonie unconsciously watched the flight of the birds, then swung round, arms stretched wide, eyes shining, and her face aglow.

“Because I love the white man in the temple who is tied to the wall, that is why!”

Her voice rang clear and true under the sky, and she stepped back quickly and threw out her hands as the man spoke.  For the banked-down fires of his passion and his love, and the hurt to his race, and his own sudden-born agony flared in one half-second into a mighty, awful conflagration.  The flame of his words licked at her feet and the hem of her garments, blazed across her hands with which she hid her face, and swept right over her from head to heels, and yet he did not touch her nor raise his voice one half tone.

“Thou woman!  Then shall no man have thee, for I will drive my dagger through the white man’s heart before thine eyes, and watch thee, thou beautiful thing, wed him in the shadow of death.”

And Leonie, catching the look in his eyes and the set of the mouth, knew that he meant what he said; and she laid her hand on his arm, so that his agony was increased a thousandfold as he looked down upon her whom he had lost.

“You would not, could not do that?” she whispered.

“Could not kill the feringhee?” and the hate in the old mutiny word was terrible to hear.  “What else should I do to him who has stolen the sun from my sky, the fragrance from my rose?”

The man seized her by the wrist, and, pulling her to him, bent down, whispering soft, passionate words.

“Shall I tell thee, love flower, what love is?  It is the gold of noon, and the silver of night, the might of the lion, and the soft cooing of the gentle dove.  As the slender vine around the straight palm, so will my love twine around thy heart.  Yea, and even as the banyan tree sends out branches to draw dew from the rounded breast of earth, my love shall yearn towards thee.  Day and her lover, Night, with the Dawn and the Sunset their children; the stag and the gentle doe, with their fierce horned offspring, and their offspring as round and smooth even as thy throat.  So will our union be, for behold, my love for thee is so surpassing that our sons could but be of the most perfect manhood, and our daughter, why, she will be after thine own fashioning.”