"Leonie! you've got to listen to me now, and I am not going to ask you to decide because Fate has decided for you. And oh! beloved, beloved, thank heaven that there is still time, that you are still free, that heaven instead of hell is waiting for you. Yes! dear heart. Fate has decided!"
He stroked her hair as he looked down into the little face crushed against his shoulder, and shifted her a wee bit that she might rest more comfortably. Leonie closed her eyes and trembled from head to foot as Fate pinched the decision between claw-like thumb and finger so that it was stillborn.
"Dear," continued Jan Cuxson as he gently patted her shoulder with his left hand, "dear, oh! my dear, just as I hold you now, so I shall always hold you. I am going to keep you, marry you, and take you right away to India next week; I'll telegraph that my things are not to be put on board to-morrow. You must have a nervous breakdown to-day, you darling, just to think of that," and his laugh rang out against the sullen stillness of the dawn, "then we will slip away, and get married, and—oh! Leonie, I love you."
Leonie said no word, but from her head to her feet swept a thrill which the man felt from his feet to his head.
He laughed again, laughed as a god might laugh with the world in his hand, and crushed her fiercely to him.
"Beloved! I love you! love you! love you! And you? Tell me you love me! Why, you dare not look me in the face and say no! You love me, dear! You are part of me; you are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Sorrow shall not touch you when you are all mine, your joys shall be my joys! And—beloved, my children shall be your children!"
With a sudden movement Leonie wrenched herself from his arms and on to her feet, whilst a driving cloud surrounded them, and a growl of thunder came over from Lundy Island way.
"Love you!" cried the girl. "Yes! I love you, if that is the right word to describe what it is I have in my heart for you. No! don't touch me! Listen, I would live for you, die for you in love. Pain through you would be joy, joy through you would be heaven."
She clasped her hands to her breast, then threw them out towards him, palm uppermost, in a wonderful gesture of passionate surrender, but her face was terrible to see, with eyes like burned out fires, and great smears of blood across her mouth and cheek.
"All that I have for you and more—oh! much more—but—I—I cannot marry you!"