Read CHAPTER LI of Leonie of the Jungle, free online book, by Joan Conquest, on ReadCentral.com.

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.

He crushed her in fierce despair against his heart as the ground moved gently under his feet, and prayed aloud to his God to bring the riven walls down upon them there in the moonlight, that in merciful death the awful fate of his beloved might be lifted from her.

The only answer to the desperate prayer was silence and shadows enveloping them like a mantle, and he lifted his stern face to the radiance of the moon, with the light of battle in the grey eyes.

“I will find a way out, dear heart,” he cried, as he turned her face gently against his shoulder. “There is a way and I will find it.” And he strode as hastily as the masses of fallen stone would allow him towards the door and the short path which would lead him to the water’s edge and safety.

As he skirted the half of the fallen altar which lay across the body of the priest, he paused for a moment and looked down upon the man who had won even in death.

As he looked the fingers of the out-flung hands twitched, and a violent shiver shook the old frame. Slowly, very slowly the gnarled old arms were gathered in under the breast as inch by inch the Hindu priest raised himself from the floor. The lower limbs were hidden, crushed under the fallen stone, and the old head hung down between the shoulders, the grey hair tangled in a wreath of jasmin flower.

He lifted his face, and the dim old eyes looked wistfully up into the grey ones staring down at him out of the shadows.

“Thou hast conquered, sahib, thou hast conquered in love,” he whispered. “And she is safe, for behold my-my power-has gone-from her. I-even I-have not obeyed, and my god-has destroyed me!”

Lifting his voice he cried aloud and died.

And as he died Leonie turned her face from the shelter of her lover’s shoulder and closed her eyes, and opening them again laughed sweetly as she looked up into his face.

“You, Jan, you! Why-whatever has happened, and-why-wherever are we?” And he looked down into the sweet face and laughed aloud, an exultant, ringing laugh which was caught and echoed and re-echoed from the dome until the place seemed filled with the sound of happiness.

“There has been a bit of an earthquake, dear, and you got hit on the head by a piece of falling brick. See, sweetheart,” and he swept the masses of hair together and twisted it between her head and his coat, “turn your face this way until I have you safely out of here, it’s nice and soft, and shut your eyes, darling-

“Yes! but,” said Leonie, as she turned her face as bidden and closed her eyes with a sigh of great content, “but-but how did we escape?”

“You were saved, dear!”

“Saved!-from what? By whom?”

She tried to turn her head, but he held it pressed close against his heart.

“From death-dear heart!”

“And by whom-tell me-Jan-by whom?”

Jan Cuxson paused a moment as he looked across towards the still figure of Madhu Krishnaghar stretched peacefully upon the ground.

“By the whitest man that has ever lived, dear!-by him!”

And he turned without another word and strode through the temple and out of the gates to the narrow way which led to safety. And where the trees met in an arch above his head he stopped and looked back, and Leonie, turning her face, passed her hand wonderingly over the tousled masses of her hair and the silken drapery about her body.

“Where are we going to? Where are you taking me?”

He shifted her completely into his left arm, pulled at a golden slender chain round her neck with his right hand, caught it in his strong white teeth and wrenched it in two.

And he answered her as he flung the jewelled cat’s-eye far out into the jungle.

“To Devon, beloved, to Devon and happiness!”

And as he closed her red mouth with kisses the earth shook gently under his feet, and the temple, with a terrific crash, caved in; burying for ever the dead priest, the broken image of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction, and Madhu Krishnaghar, son of princes, her splendid Indian lover.