Leonie’s hands moved mechanically to her hair, which she unfastened and shook out in all its glory; then they moved to the fastening of her jersey, and one by one her garments slipped to the floor, leaving her nude save for the covering of her hair.

Leaning down she lifted the sari, and with one quick movement twisted it about her waist and across her breast; slipped the garland of white flowers about her neck, and flinging back her hair raised her hands above her head and shouted.

She did not sing or cry aloud, she shouted with her mouth wide open, and her head thrust forward between her uplifted arms, a degrading picture of religious sensuality; and gathering up armsful of flowers from the floor, ran lightly over to the priest upon the tip of her bare toes which were stained a hideous red, and putting the palm of one hand against her forehead salaamed and said “Yes?” questioningly.

He laid no hand upon her, he made no sign and spoke no word, but she, as drugged by another’s will as if she were under the bane of opium, followed him unhesitatingly into the secret places of the temple.  Her bare feet made no sound on the dust of centuries; her eyes looked back unwaveringly into the eyes of the gods who leered down upon her; her hair caught around those others of which it is not seemly to write; and before them all she cast her flowers, and upon them all she laid her 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.