Blood streamed from the side of his head, battered in by a broken fragment of the high altar that had been hurled through the air; his left shoulder was in splinters, crushed by the collapse of the roof which must have killed Leonie if he had not covered her with his body; blood spouted from some great severed artery in the arm which seemed to hang by a thread from the splintered shoulder; yet was his face aglow with light and love, and his eyes afire with happiness as he raised a tawny tress of hair and pressed it to his lips.

He was dying, quickly, yet he turned his head and smiled at the sound of Jan Cuxson’s boots scrambling over the impeding heaps of stone.  For one second only the torture of the sacrifice required of him flared in the soft brown eyes; and then in the pride of his great race, and with an effort of will beyond all telling, he put his unbroken arm round the woman he loved so well, lifted her, got somehow to his feet, and walked, aye! walked steadily across the few yards which separated him from the white man.

Cuxson, not realising his terrible plight, with eyes only for the woman he loved, wrenched Leonie from his hold and swept her from head to foot with frantic eyes.

“What have you done to her?” he demanded fiercely.  “Before the earthquake what did you do to her?  Tell me—­or by God I’ll——­”

He stopped the bitter words in time to save himself from everlasting remorse.

For Madhu Krishnaghar suddenly straightened his battered body, and looked the white man in the eyes.

“She is safe, O white man, safe and unharmed.  Take her, keep her—­carry her by the—­the short road without the—­the temple gates—­to—­happiness, I give her—­to—­you—­because I—­I love—­her—­for ever!”

There was a moment’s terrible silence in which the two men stood divided, yet united, in their great love for the one woman.

The native of India put his hand to his forehead and salaamed before the woman for whom he had sacrificed all, then turned slowly around towards the place where the image of his god had so lately stood.

“Kali!” he called, and his young voice was as the clashing of golden bells at sunset.  “Kali!  Mother of all—­I come!”

And unwitting of the great reward awaiting those who attain everlasting peace through the victory of the greater love, he crashed face downwards, dead, upon the flower-strewn floor, and passed for ever into the safe keeping of the one and only God.

CHAPTER LI

  “When the day breaks and the shadows flee away!”—­The Bible.

Jan Cuxson lifted Leonie’s face to the light of the moon, and caught his breath at the sight of the turned back eyes and drooping mouth.

This was the outcome of it all! This was how she was left to him; saved from physical hurt but with her mind for ever bound by the will of yon dead priest.  Hypnotised, mesmerised, to be under the influence of the Goddess of Destruction until her death; maybe to pass her life in the security of a padded cell; she, his Leonie, his love, his wife-to-be.