Her mouth quivered in a smile, and her eyes, like stars, flashed back into the flaming ones so near her own as the man, lost to all but his consuming love for the girl, bent above her, and with slender hands crushed her back against the edge of the steps until the skin of her shoulders was torn and bruised.
"As the creeper!" he said, whispering the words of the Vega hymn with his eyes staring straight into her eyes. "As the creeper has completely embraced the tree so do thou embrace me, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"
He smiled softly as she half raised her arms and whispered to her, the words sounding like a summer breeze blowing upon the hill-top.
"As the eagle, flying forth, beats down his wings upon the earth, so do I beat down thy mind, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"
And his delicate finger-tips pressed about her temples as he whispered to her.
"As the sun goeth at one about the heaven—and—earth here, so do I go about thy mind, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"
Slowly he bent still closer, and gently put one hand upon the gracious curve of her slender throat; and Leonie, wanton, seductive, bewitched Leonie smiled as she too whispered in the tongue of India's holy writ.
"Let yon man love me; being dear to me let him love me; ye gods send forth love, let yon man burn for me.
"That yon man may love me, not I him at any time, ye gods send forth love, let yon man burn for me!"
The silence which followed was pierced by the call of the holy conch shell, so low, so sweet, to prayer, to sacrifice.