“Well, marry me—­marry me, beloved, and give me the right to protect you—­from trouble, and these slanderous, murderous tongues.”

Leonie’s face was lovely to behold, swept by a wave of colour, and with eyes like stars; but she shook her head although a little smile parted the crimson mouth.

“No!  Jan!  Nothing will make me change.  Not until we know and until I am cured.  Do you think I would risk our love, and our happiness?  I shall never, never marry you as long as I have this—­this longing to—­this desire to—­to—­oh! what is it.  Find out what has happened to me, find out what I do when I walk in my sleep—­just how mad I am, and if the madness can be cured, and if it can, then I will—­will——­”

“Yes, dear?”

“I will—­will——!”

It was no pretty sight to watch her striving to speak, her mouth opening and shutting without sound, her hands against her throat.

Then she looked at him suddenly, smiling sweetly, and put both hands in his, while he, sick with pain and unconfessed fear, changed the conversation abruptly by the grace of understanding.

“I think you ought to go away, Leonie—­to the hills—­for a change.  It’s getting frightfully hot, why don’t you?”

“Yes!—­I might—­I think I will—­I’m so tired of everything—­so very—­very tired!”

“Where to, dear?”

Leonie bent her head a little sideways as though listening, made a strange little movement with both her hands, then placed the open palms against her forehead and replied: 

“To Benares!”

She had barely whispered the words, so quietly did she speak, as the poinsettia flowers bent slightly—­to a passing breeze—­may be!

CHAPTER XXXIII

  “Dona praesentis cape laetus horae, ac
  Lingue severa.”—­Horace.

Leonie’s first long-distance journey was just like other people’s first long-distance journey in India.

And being of the type which revels in the new and unknown, she loved it.

Who wouldn’t!

The seething masses of dusky humanity enchanted her; she delighted in the glaring colouring, the clank of the holy man’s chains, the incessant call of the water carrier and sweetmeat vendor, and the clang of iron on iron which announces the train’s departure.

She absolutely thrilled on disrobing the first night in the little bathroom while her ayah spread her sheets and pillows and blankets upon the lower berth; and when her bodywoman disappeared through the door leading to the servants’ compartment, she lay for a time watching the stars, and the glimmer of passing mosque, or temple, or tomb.

Then she laughed aloud in sheer content, wedged Jan Cuxson’s box of chocolate biscuits safely into the side of the bunk, and turned to the side table to look for light literature in the shape of a magazine.

Having acquired the pernicious habit of eating biscuits and reading before going to sleep, she frowned upon the discovery that her ayah appeared to have left the books upon Howrah Station; and had stretched her arm to rap upon the wall to summon the woman, when her eye caught sight of a paper volume lying under the opposite bunk.