No movement of his body, but he gave a jerk of his will-power which brought the veins out like whipcord upon his forehead, and drove the nails deep into the palms of his hands.

And in response, Leonie’s arms slackened.  She stood quite still, staring out to where the Sunderbunds lay hidden under mist; then she put one bare foot upon the lower rail, and swinging herself up, sat sideways, leaning far over; in such a position that the slightest lurch of the ship would have sent her headlong into the water.

The native’s eyes narrowed to slits, and his nostrils dilated strangely as he pitted his will against the force which was impelling her.

He dared not speak, he dared not touch her.  For he knew that one moment of recognition, one breath of scandal touching himself and the woman he trailed, meant the crumbling of the altar he was building stone by stone to his god.

For that reason he had taken the mail instead of the slow boat she had chosen, and had thought long before deciding to come aboard, even at Colombo.

He was afraid because of the evening she had answered when he called her across London to his side, by the image of Kali the Terrible in a glass case; afraid that she might recognise him and be on her guard, undoing all that he had done in the last year in obedience to the mandate of the old priest.

Sleeping Leonie, having descended from her perilous seat, stood for a moment with outflung arms, looking across the waters; then turned and walked swiftly and softly like a cat, straight up to the man who rose.  Sweetly she laughed up into his face as she laid one little hand upon the great white cloak which swung from his shoulders, unaware that in moving her hand her own garment had slipped, and that her beauty lay exposed like a lotus bud before his eyes.

She came so close that her bare shoulder touched the fine white linen, and the curves of her scarlet lips wet but a fraction of an inch from his own; and her whimpered words in the eastern tongue were as a flame to an oil well.

“This plant,” she murmured, with the light of unholiness in her gleaming eyes, “this plant is honey born—­at the tip of my tongue honey—­mayest thou come unto my intent!”

He answered softly in the same sonorous tongue and she swayed towards him like a flower.

“About thee with an encompassing sugar-cane have I gone, in order to absence of mutual hatred; that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!”

Where is the dividing line?

What is it that causes the saint suddenly to fling aside his holiness and hurl himself headlong to perdition? or the sinner to hurl aside his evilness and fling himself headlong into a monastery?

The jogging of memory, mostly, I think.

For what resolutions can not be conceived, and accomplished, or broken by the scent of a flower, the touch of a hand, or the feel of a piece of stuff.