“That day is a day of wrath-a day of clouds
and thick darkness.-The Bible.

“India!” repeated Leonie, “India!”

She flung round towards the sea, standing on the very edge of the cliff, the violence of the wind against her the only barrier between her and certain death.

“Tell me,” she cried, pointing to the heaving, raging mass of waters with a hand above which shone dully a blood-soaked bandage. “Tell me what I did to myself down there just now. I awoke in a different place from which I went to sleep. I had no-I am cut and bruised. Terrible things happen wherever I am-they follow me. I woke one night in a pitch dark room and saw two green eyes staring at me from the wall. They were my eyes-reflected in a looking-glass-mine-they shine at night like a cat’s-and there’s a voice calling-often. Oh! I tell you I’m haunted, bewitched, cursed!”

“Come to me, beloved.”

She turned and went like a child into the outstretched arms, and he, having wet his handkerchief on the mist-damped grass, bent the weary head back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains from the despairing face.

“You walk in your sleep, Leonie, by reason of the workings of an overwrought brain, that is all. India is the problem, and your ayah is the answer. I think she frightened you somehow, made some deep impression on you, on your baby brain, and we are going to India to find her. It’s very simple, dear, once find the cause we can easily find the remedy, and it will be much better if you come with me. By the way, who gave you that cat’s-eye?”

He had made a slip.

“When did you see it?” answered Leonie quickly, “I never showed it to you! Were-were you down there near me, before you called?”

“No,” steadily lied the man, “but the thing slipped through your blouse one day-it’s a brute. Who gave it to you?”

“My ayah! Do you know, I think you are quite wrong about her. Auntie says Mother told her that she nearly broke her heart when I left India, seventeen years ago, and she writes to me regularly every three months. Only last week I had a letter from-

“Do you speak Hindustani?” interrupted Cuxson abruptly, with a frown on his face.

“Not a word!”

“Or Sanskrit?”

“Oh! no, neither, but the letters are in English, evidently written by one of those letter writers, who get so much for each letter they write for the illiterate poor. And in every one she says how she loves me and longs for my return, and although she is very happy in the service of some Ranee in the north of India, she wants to give it up and come to me.”

There was a pause, broken by the nearing thunder and the crash of the waves against the cliffs.

“Don’t let’s worry about that yet, dear, as everything is settled splendidly and-

But Leonie pulled away and stood facing him with her hands in his against his heart.

“Do you really love me?”

The whisper was almost lost in the tumult of the breakers beneath.

“Love you, Leonie, love you!”

“What would you forgive me through love?”

“Forgive you! Everything! Dishonour could not touch you, and everything else I should forgive!”

Leonie tried to speak as she looked past him to the little green track between the downs which led to the world, and all it contained for her; and he, obtuse male, content in the plans he had mapped out entirely to his own satisfaction, and having blissfully taken the girl’s consent to the programme for granted, failed to read the agony written across her face in capital letters.

“Tell me that you will be content, dear. I’m rich enough, but nothing compared with-oh! tell me, what do you like-what do you want-what do you really care for!”

She freed her hands and turned to look out to sea, where the day had been born in agony upon a bed of sullen, unbroken water.

Then she looked straight down at the waves flinging themselves against the cliffs, drenching her with spray, moaning, fretting at the barrier, retiring only to do the same thing over and over again.

“What do I want, O Man whom I love? I want a white house within high, white walls, on the edge of the sea. I want my arms full of children-yours and mine. I want love, oh! love and yet more love, that is what I want!”

The man twisted her round and held her at arms’ length, her heels within an inch of the edge, her body bent back over the chasm, and her hair, spreading like a banner in the tearing wind, swept about his shoulders and across his face, intoxicating him with its perfume and silken caress.

Passion swept over him, he shook her like a reed, and her foot slipped off the earth into nothingness.

But not a word said she, though she prayed that he might suddenly let go his hold and send her crashing to sweet death on the rocks beneath.

You see what happens when you are decent and honest and have a mind to keep your word-just death rather than dishonour, and pain to others.

Whereas if only she had been dishonest, and therefore commonplace, she would either have chucked her given word to the devil, or the deep grey sea over which she stood, and cleared for her own happiness and a marriage licence; or kept her word in one sense while making deedy little plans of triangular pattern for future reference.

“Is that what you want, oh! heart of mine?” said Jan Cuxson, exulting in the sensation that his hands alone held her metaphorically and actually safe from the depths beneath. “And that is what I am going to give you, beloved, and more, much more in exchange for the treasure you will put into my hands. Oh! Leonie, my love-

And yet he did not kiss her, but pulled her farther inland and let her go as she essayed to free herself, having come to the absolute breaking point.

What a wooing!

The copper coloured clouds were massed above and about them, the trees bent and straightened and bent again before the wind, the sea heaved in huge unbroken waves right to the horizon; Lundy Island, Hartland, and Baggy Point had disappeared in a driving sheet of rain.

How beautiful she looked as she stood in the storm, cut, bruised and dishevelled.

Just for one moment she looked into the eyes of the man she loved, whose hands were outstretched for the treasures she could not lay therein; and then she turned and fled as a great streak of lightning rent the clouds, and thunder like heavy artillery crashed about their heads.

She had not gone twenty yards when she stumbled and fell heavily.

Her boots were being hurled here and there by the waves in the cove where she had left them; her left foot was cut and bleeding badly, but a sudden desperate courage came to her when she felt herself raised and steadied.

“I shall carry you to the foot of the hill near your cottage!”

She struggled as he lifted her, struggled so violently that he put her on her feet.

“Don’t touch me, Jan, don’t come near me, because I-because-

And the mantle of his satisfaction and content being suddenly rent into a thousand shreds by the knife edge of his intuition, he put both hands on her shoulders, looked down into the misery of her eyes, and very gently said one word.

“Because?”

“Because,” and she began to laugh without making any sound, her mouth twitching, her shoulders shaking, “because I am to be married to-day at noon!”

“To-day! but you said-

“I lied.”

“You lied-to me!”

She made a little sound which reminded him of an animal agonising in a trap, whilst the fury of his own pain drove him to hurt her even more.

Why-lie?”

“Why?” her eyes blazed as she defied the storm, her hell and fate. “Why?-because I love you, because I love you so much that I wanted to cheat life out of one month of happiness. And I have had it-I have had it-and I love you-

She flung her hands up to the stormy skies and brought them down, clenched against her breast. “I love you, God hear me, I love you!”

And with a terrible cry that went wailing out to sea she fled away through the lash of the blinding storm.