When the cricket show-off was finished, Joe talked India and ragged Tara, in a big-brotherly way, ignored Christine, as if five and a half simply didn't count. That roused Roy; and by way of tacit rebuke, he bestowed such marked attention on his small sister, that Christine (who adored him, and was feeling miserably shy) sparkled like a dewdrop when the sun flashes out.

She was a tiny creature, exquisitely proportioned; fair, like her father, yet in essence a replica of her mother, with the same wing-like brows and dark limpid eyes. Dimly jealous of Tara, she was the only one of the three who relished the presence of the intruder and wished strange boys oftener came to tea.

Millicent, the nursery-maid, presided. She was tall and smiling and obviously a lady. She watched and listened and said little during the meal.

Once, in the course of it, Lilámani came in and hovered round them, filling Roy's tea-cup, spreading Christine's honey—extra thick. Her Eastern birthright of service, her joy in waiting on those she loved, had survived ten years of English marriage, and would survive ten more. It was as much an essential part of her as the rhythm of her pulses and the blood in her veins.

She was no longer the apple-blossom vision of the morning. She wore her mother-o'-pearl sari with its narrow gold border. Her dress, that was the colour of a dove's wing, shimmered changefully as she moved, and her aquamarine pendant gleamed like drops of sea water on its silver chain.

But if tea was not much fun, after tea was worse.

They were told to run and play in the garden; and obediently they ran out, dog and all. But what could you play at with a superior being who had made twenty runs not out, in a House Match—whatever that might be? They showed him their ring-doves and their rabbits; but he didn't even pretend to be interested, though Tara did her best, because it was she who had brought this infliction on Roy.

"How about the summer-house?" she suggested, hopefully. For the summer-house locker contained an assortment of old tennis-bats, mallets and balls, that might prove more stimulating than rabbits and doves. Roy offered no objection; so they straggled across a corner of the lawn to a narrower strip behind the tall yew hedge.

The grown-ups were gathered under the twin beeches; and away at the far end of the lawn Roy's mother and Tara's mother were strolling up and down in the sun.

Again Roy noticed how Joe Bradley stared: and as they rounded the corner of the hedge he remarked suddenly "I say! There's that swagger ayah of yours walking with Lady Despard. She's jolly smart, for an ayah. Did you bring her from India? You never said you'd been there."

Roy started and went hot all over. "Well, I have—just on a visit. And she's not an ayah. She's my Mummy!"

Joe Bradley opened his mouth as well as his eyes, which made him look plainer than ever.

"Golly! what a tale! White people don't have ayahs for Mothers—not in my India. I s'pose your Pater married her out there?"

"He didn't. And I tell you she's not an ayah."

But that unspeakable boy, instead of being impressed, laughed in the rudest way.

"Don't excite, you silly kid. I'm not as green as you are. Besides—who cares——?"

It flashed on Roy, through the blur of his bewildered rage, that perhaps the Boy-from-India was jealous. He tried to speak. Something clutched at his throat; but instinct told him he had a pair of hands....

To the utter amazement of Tara, and of the enemy, he silently sprang at the bigger boy; grabbed him unscientifically by the knot of his superior neck-tie and hit out, with more fury than precision, at cheeks and eyes and nose——

For a few exciting seconds he had it all his own way. Then the enemy—recovered from the first shock of surprise—spluttered wrathfully and hit out in return. He had weight in his favour. He tried to bend Roy backwards; and failing began to kick viciously wherever he could get at him. It hurt rather badly and made Roy angrier than ever. In a white heat of rage, he shook and pummelled, regardless of choking sounds and fingers clutching at his hair....

Tara, half excited and half frightened, could only grab Prince's collar, to keep him from rushing into the fray; and when Joe started kicking, it was all she could do not to let him go. But she knew Athol—her dearest brother—would say it wasn't fair play. So she tugged, and Prince tugged; while the boys, fiercely silent, rocked to and fro; and Christine sobbed piteously—"He's hurting Roy—he's killing Roy!"

Tara, fully occupied with Prince, could only jerk out: "Don't be a baby, Chris. Roy's all right. He loves it." Which Christine simply didn't believe. There was blood on his tussore shirt. It mightn't be his, but still——

It made even Tara feel rather sick; and when a young gardener appeared on the scene she called out: "Oh, Mudford, do stop them—or something'll happen."

By now, the enemy's nose was bleeding freely and spoiling the brand-new blazer. He gasped and spluttered: "Drop it, you little beast!" But Roy, fired by Mudford's applause, only hit out harder.

"'Pologise—'pologise! Say she isn't!"

His forward jerk on the words took Joe unawares. The edge of the lawn tripped him up and they rolled on the grass, Joe undermost in a close embrace——

And at that critical moment there came strolling round the corner of the hedge a group of grown-ups—Sir Nevil Sinclair with Mrs Bradley, Lady Roscoe, Lady Despard and Roy's godfather, the distinguished novelist, Cuthbert Broome.

Mudford and his barrow departed; and Tara looked appealingly at her mother.

Roy—intent on the prostrate foe—suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder and heard his father's voice say sharply: "Get up, Roy, and explain yourself!"

They got up, both of them—and stood there, looking shy and stupefied and very much the worse for wear:—hair ruffled, faces discoloured, shirts torn open. One of Roy's stockings was slipping down; and, in the midst of his confused sensations, he heard the excited voice of Mrs Bradley urgently demanding to know what her "poor dear boy" could have done to be treated like that.

No one seemed to answer her; and the poor dear boy was too busy comforting his nose to take much interest in the proceedings.

Lady Despard (you could tell at a glance she was Tara's mother) was on her knees comforting Christine; and as Roy's senses cleared, he saw with a throb of relief that his mother was not there. But Aunt Jane was—and Uncle Cuthbert——

He seemed to stand there panting and aching in an endless silence, full of eyes. He did not know that his father was giving him a few seconds to recover himself.

It was Tara who spoke—still clutching Prince, lest he overwhelm Roy and upset his hardly maintained dignity.

"Joe made him angry—he did," she thrust in with feminine officiousness; and was checked by her mother's warning finger.

Mrs Bradley—long and thin and beaky—bore down upon her battered son, who edged away sullenly from proffered caresses.

Sir Nevil, not daring to meet the humorous eye of Cuthbert Broome—still contemplated the dishevelled dignity of his own small son—half puzzled, half vexed.

"You've done it now, Roy. Say you're sorry," he prompted; his voice a shade less stern than he intended.

Roy shook his head.

"It's him to say—not me."

"Did he begin it?"

"No."

"Of course he didn't," snapped the injured mother. "He's been properly brought up," which was not exactly polite, but she was beside herself—simply an irate mother-creature, all beak and ruffled feathers. "You deserve to be whipped. You've hurt him badly."

"Oh, dry up, mother," Joe murmured behind his sanguinary handkerchief, edging still further away from maternal fussings and possible catechism.

Nevil Sinclair saw clearly that his son would neither apologise nor explain. At heart he suspected young Bradley, if only on account of his insufferable mother, but the laws of hospitality must be upheld.

"Go to your own room, Roy," he said with creditable severity, "and stay there till I come."

Roy gave him one look—mutely reproachful. Then—to every one's surprise and Tara's delight—he walked straight up to the Enemy.

"I did hammer hardest. 'Pologise!"

And the elders, watching with amused approbation, had no inkling that the words were spoken not by Roy Sinclair but by Prithvi Raj.

The Enemy, twice humbled, answered nothing; and Roy,—his dignity unimpaired by such trifles as a lump on his cheek, a dishevelled tie and one stocking curled lovingly round his ankle—walked leisurely away, with never a glance in the direction of the "grown-ups," who had no concern whatever with this—the most important event of his life——

Tara—torn between wrath and admiration—watched him go. In her eyes he was a hero, a victim of injustice and the density of grown-ups.

She promptly released Prince, who bounded after his master. She wanted to go too. It was all her fault, bringing that horrid boy to tea. She did hope Roy would explain things properly. But boys were stupid sometimes and she wanted to make sure. While her mother was tactfully suggesting a homeward move, she slipped up to Sir Nevil and insinuated a small hand into his.

"Uncle Nevil, do believe," she whispered urgently. "Truly it isn't fair——"

His quick frown warned her to say no more; but the pressure of his hand comforted her a little.

All the same she hated going home. She hated 'that putrid boy'—a forbidden adjective; but what else could you call him? She was glad he would be gone the day after to-morrow. She was even more glad his nose was bleeding and his eye bunged up and his important blazer all bloodied. Girl though she was, there ran a fiercer strain in her than in Roy.

As they moved off, she had an inspiration. She was given that way.

"Mummy darling," she said in her small clear voice, "mayn't I stay back a little and play with Chris. She's so unhappy. Alice could fetch me—couldn't she? Please."

"Very well, dear," she said. "I'll send Alice at half-past six. Run along."

Tara gave her hand a grateful little squeeze—and ran.

She would have hated the "beaky mother" worse than ever could she have heard her remark to Lady Despard, when they were alone.

"Really, a most obstinate, ungoverned child. His mother, of course—a very pretty creature—but what can you expect? Natives always ruin boys."

Lady Despard—Lilámani Sinclair's earliest champion and friend—could be trusted to deal effectually with a remark of that quality.

As for Tara—once "the creatures" were out of sight they were extinct. All the embryo mother in her was centred on Roy. It was a shame sending him to his room, like a naughty boy, when he was really a champion, a King-Arthur's-Knight. But if only he properly explained, Uncle Nevil would surely understand——

That very problem was puzzling Roy as he lay on his bed, with Prince's head against his shoulder, aching a a good deal, exulting at thought of his new-born knighthood, wondering how long he was to be treated like a sinner,—and, through it all, simply longing for his mother....

It was the conscious craving for her sympathy, her applause, that awakened him to his dilemma.

He had championed her with all his might against that lumpy Boy-of-ten,—who kicked in the meanest way; and he couldn't explain why, so she couldn't know ever. The memory of those insulting words hurt him so that he shrank from repeating them to anyone—least of all to her. Yet how could he see her and feel her and not tell her everything? She would surely ask—she would want to know—and then—when he tried to think beyond that point he felt simply lost.

At the sound of footsteps he sat up, suddenly very much aware of his unheroic dishevelment. He tugged at the fallen stocking and made hasty dabs at his hair. But it was only Esther the housemaid with an envelope on a tray. Envelopes, however, were always mysterious and exciting.

His name was scribbled on this one in Tara's hand; and as Esther retreated he opened it, wondering....

It contained a half-sheet of note-paper, and between the folds lay a circle of narrow blue ribbon plaited in three strands. But only two of the strands were ribbon; the third was a tress of her gleaming hair. Roy gazed at it a moment, lost in admiration, still wondering; then he glanced at Tara's letter—not scrawled, but written with laboured neatness and precision.

Roy sat looking from the letter to the bangle with a distinctly pleasant kind of mixed-up feeling inside. He was so surprised, so comforted, so elated by this tribute from his High Tower Princess, who was an exacting person in the matter of heroes. Now—besides being a Knight and a champion he was Bracelet-Bound Brother as well.

The ancient custom, she told them, still holds good, though it has declined in use, like all things chivalrous, in an age deafened by the clamour of industrial strife; an age grown blind to the beauty of service, that, in defiance of "progress," still remains the keynote of an Indian woman's life.

So these privileged children had heard much of it, through the medium of Lilámani's Indian tales; and this particular one had made a deeper impression on Tara than on Roy; perhaps because the budding woman in her relished the power of choice and command it conferred on her own sex. Certainly no thought of possible future commands dawned on Roy. It was her pride in his achievement, so characteristically expressed that flattered his incipient masculine vanity and added a cubit to his stature. He knew now what he meant to be when he grew up. Not a painter, or a soldier or a gardener—but a Bracelet-Bound Brother....

Gingerly, almost shyly, he slipped over his hand the deftly woven, trifle of ribbon and gleaming hair. As the first glow of pleasure subsided, there sprang the instinctive thought—"Won't Mummy be pleased!" And straightway he was caught afresh in the toils of his dilemma—How could he possibly explain——?

What was she doing? Why didn't she come——?

There——! His ear caught far-off footsteps—too heavy for hers. He slipped off the Bracelet, folded it in Tara's letter and tucked it away inside his shirt.

Hurriedly—a little nervously—he tied his brown bow and got upon his feet, just as the door opened and his father came in.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" he went on, hoping the pause had been impressive; strongly suspecting it had been nothing of the kind. "Gentlemen, as I told you, don't hammer their guests. It was rather a bad hammering, to judge from his handkerchief. And you don't look particularly sorry about it either."

"I'm not—not one littlest bit."

This was disconcerting; but Nevil held his ground.

"Then I suppose I've got to whack you. If boys aren't sorry for their sins, it's the only way."

Roy's eyelids flickered a little.

"You better not," he said with the same impersonal air of conviction. "You see, it wouldn't make me sorry. And you don't hurt badly. Not half as much as Joe did. He was mean. He kicked. I wouldn't have stopped, all the same—if you hadn't come."

The note of reproach was more disconcerting than ever.

"Well, if whacking's no use, what am I to do with you? Shut you up here till bedtime—eh?"

Roy considered that dismal proposition, with his eyes on the summer world outside.

"Well—you can if you like. But it wouldn't be fair." A pause. "You don't know what a horrid boy he was, Daddy. You'd have hit him harder—even if he was a guest."

"I wonder!" Nevil fatally admitted. "Of course it would all depend on the provocation."

"What's 'provication'?"

The instant alertness, over a new word, brought back the smile to Nevil's eyes.

"It means—saying or doing something bad enough to make it right for you to be angry."

"Well, it was bad enough. It was"—a portentous pause—"about Mummy."

Pulling a bedside chair near the window, he sat down and drew Roy close to him, taking his shoulders between his hands.

"Now then, old boy, tell me just exactly what happened—as man to man."

The appeal was irresistible. But—how could he——? The very change in his father's manner made the telling at once more difficult and more urgent.

"Daddy—it hurts too much. I don't know how to say it——" he faltered, and the blood tingled in his cheeks.

If Nevil Sinclair was not a stern father, neither was he a very demonstrative one. Even his closest relations were tinged with something of the artist's detachment, and innate respect for the individual even in embryo. But at sight of Roy's distress and delicacy of feeling, his heart melted in him. Without a word, he slipped an arm round the boy's shoulder and drew him closer still.

"That better, eh? You've got to pull it through, somehow," he said gently, so holding him that Roy could, if he chose, nestle against him. He did choose. It might be babyish; but he hated telling: and it was a wee bit easier with his face hidden. So, in broken phrases and in a small voice that quivered with anger revived—he told.

While he was telling, his father said nothing; and when it was over, he still said nothing. He seemed to be looking out of the window, and Roy felt him draw one big breath.

"Have you got to whack me—now, Daddy?" he asked, still in his small voice.

His father's hand closed on his arm. "No. You were right, Roy," he said. "I would have hit harder. Ill-mannered little beast! All the same——"

"The fact is, old man," he went on, trying to speak in his normal voice, "young Bradley and a good many of his betters spend years in India without coming to know very much about the real people over there. You'll understand why when you're older. They all have Indians for servants, and they see Indians working in shops and villages, just like plenty of our people do here. But they don't often meet many of the other sort—like Mummy and Grandfather and Uncle Rama—except sometimes in England. And then—they make stupid mistakes—just because they don't know better. But they needn't be rude about it, like Joe; and I'm glad you punched him—hard."

"So'm I. Fearfully glad." He stood upright now, his head erect:—proud of his father's approval, and being treated as "man to man." "But, Daddy—what are we going to do ... about Mummy? I do want her to know ... it was for her. But I couldn't tell—what Joe said. Could you?"

Nevil shook his head.

"Then—what?"

"You leave it to me, Roy. I'll make things clear without repeating Joe's rude remarks. She'd have been up before this; but I had to see you first—because of the whacking!" His eye twinkled. "She's longing to get at your bruises——"

"Oh nev' mind my bruises. They're all right now."

"And beautiful to behold!" He lightly touched the lump on Roy's cheek. "I'd let her dab them, though. Women love fussing over us when we're hurt—especially if we've been fighting for them!"

"Yes—they do," Roy agreed gravely; and to his surprise, his father drew him close and kissed his forehead.

"Oh, what a bad, wicked Sonling!" she murmured, gathering him close.

He loved her upside-down fashion of praise and endearment; never guessing its Eastern significance—to avert the watchfulness of jealous gods swift to spy out our dearest treasures, that hinder detachment, and snatch them from us. "Such a big rude boy—and you tried to kill him only because he did not understand your queer kind of mother! That you will find often, Roy; because it is not custom. Everywhere it is the same. For some kind of people not to be like custom is much worse than not to be good. And that boy has a mother too much like custom. Not surprising if he didn't understand."

"I made him though—I did," Roy exulted shamelessly, marvelling at his father's cleverness, wondering how much he had told. "I hammered hard. And I'm not sorry a bit. Nor Daddy isn't either."

For answer she gave him a convulsive little squeeze—and felt the crackle of paper under his shirt. "Something hidden there! What is it, Sonling?" she asked with laughing eyes: and suddenly shyness overwhelmed him. For the moment he had forgotten his treasure; and now he was wondering if he could show it—even to her.

"It is Tara—I think it's rather a secret——" he began.

"But I may see?" Then as he still hesitated, she added with grave tenderness: "Only if you are wishing it, son of my heart. To-day—you are a man."

From his father that recognition had been sufficiently uplifting. And now—from her...! The subtle flattery of it and the deeper prompting of his own heart demolished his budding attempt at reserve.

"I am—truly," he said: and she, sitting where his father had sat, unfolded Tara's letter—and the bangle lay revealed.

"Now—you are Bracelet-Bound, my son. So young!"

Roy felt a throb of pride. It was clearly a fine thing to be.

"Must I give a 'broidered bodice'?"

"I will broider a bodice—the most beautiful; and you shall give it. Remember, Roy, it is not a little matter. It is for always."

"Even when I'm a grown-up man?"

"Yes, even then. If she shall ask from you any service, you must not refuse—ever."

Roy wrinkled his forehead. He had forgotten that part of it. Tara might ask anything. You couldn't tell with girls. He had a moment of apprehension.

"But, Mummy, I don't think—Tara didn't mean all that. It's only—our sort of game of play——"

Unerringly she read his thoughts, and shook her head at him with smiling eyes, as when he made naughty faces about Aunt Jane.

"Too sacred thing for only game of play, Roy. By keeping the bracelet, you are bound." Her smile deepened. "You were not afraid of the big rude boy. Yet you are just so much afraid—for Tara." She indicated the amount with the rose-pink tip of her smallest finger. "Tara—almost like sister—would never ask anything that could be wrong to do."

At this gentle rebuke he flushed and held his head a shade higher.

"I'm not afraid, Mummy. And I will keep the bracelet—and I am bound."

"That is my brave son."

"She said—I am Prithvi Raj."

"She said true." Her hand caressed his hair. "Now you can run down and tell you are forgiven."

"You too, Mummy?"

"In a little time. Not just now. But see——" Her brows flew up. "I was coming to mend your poor bruises!"

"I haven't got any bruises."

Gravely she entered into his mood.

"That is good. Then we will just make you tidy—and one littlest dab for this not-bruise on your cheek."

Left to herself, Lilámani moved back to the window with her innate, deliberate grace. There she sat down again, very still, resting her cheek on her hand; drinking in the serenity, the translucent stillness of clear green spaces robed in early evening light, like a bride arrayed for the coming of her lord. The higher tree-tops were haloed with glory. Young leaves of beeches and poplars gleamed like minted gold; and on the lawn, the great twin beeches cast a stealthily encroaching continent of shadow. Among the shrubs, under her window, birds were trilling out their ecstasy of welcome to the sun, in his Hour of Union with Earth—the Divine Mother, of whom every human mother is, in Eastern eyes, a part, a symbol, however imperfect.

Yet, beneath her carven tranquillity, heart and spirit were deeply stirred. For all Nevil's skill in editing the tale of Roy's championship, she had read his hidden thoughts as unerringly as she had divined Mrs Bradley's curiosity and faint hostility beneath the veneer of good manners, not yet imparted to her son.

She had frankly explained matters to her beloved Lilámani as they strolled together on the lawn, while Roy was enlightening Joe on the farther side of the yew hedge.

His championship had moved her more profoundly than she dared let him see without revealing all she knew. For the same reason, she could not show Nevil her full appreciation of his tact and delicacy. How useless—trying to hide his thoughts—he ought to know by now: but how beautiful—how endearing!

That she, who had boldly defied all gods and godlings, all claims of caste and family, should have reaped so rich a harvest——! For her—high priestess of the inner life—that was the miracle of miracles: scarcely less so to-day than in that crowning hour when she had placed, her first man-child in the arms of her husband—still, at heart, lord of her being. For the tale of her inner life might almost be told in two words—she loved.

Within a year of his ill-considered marriage Sir Nevil had astonished all who knew him with the unique Exhibition of the now famous Ramayána pictures, inspired by his wife: a series of arresting canvases, setting forth the story of India's great epic, her confession of faith in the two supreme loyalties—of the Queen to her husband, of the King to his people. His daring venture had proved successful beyond hope. Artistic and critical London had hailed him as a newcomer of promise, amounting to genius: and Lilámani Sinclair, daughter of Rajputs, had only escaped becoming the craze of the moment by her precipitate withdrawal to Antibes, where she had come within an ace of losing all, largely through the malign influence of Jane—her evil genius during those wonderful, difficult, early months of marriage.

Nevil had returned to find himself a man of note; a prophet, even in his own county, where feathers had been ruffled a little by his erratic proceedings. Hence a discreetly changed attitude in the neighbourhood, when Lilámani, barely nineteen, had presented her husband with a son.

Not that they would have expressed it so. To talk about the soul and its colour savoured of being psychic or morbid—which Heaven forbid! The soul of the right-minded Bramleigh matron was a neutral-tinted, decently veiled phantom, officially recognised morning and evening, also on Sundays, but by no means permitted to interfere with the realities of life.

The soul of Lilámani Sinclair—tremulous, passionate and aspiring—was a living flame, that lighted her thoughts, her prayers, her desires; and burned with clearer intensity because her religion had been stripped of all feastings and forms and ceremonies by a marriage that set her for ever outside caste. The inner Reality—free of earth-born mists and clouds—none could take from her.

God manifest through Nature, the Divine Mother, must surely accept her incense and sacrifice of the spirit, since no other was permitted. Her father had given her that assurance; and to it she clung, as a child in a crowd clings confidingly to the one familiar hand.

She was none the less eager to glean all she could assimilate of the religion to which her husband conformed, but in which, it seemed, he did not ardently believe. Her secret pangs on this score had been eased a little by later knowledge that it was he who shielded her from tacit pressure to make the change of faith expected of her by certain members of his family. Jane—out of regard for his wishes—had refrained from frontal attacks; but more than one flank movement had been executed by means of the Vicar (a second cousin) and of Aunt Julia—a mild elder Sinclair, addicted to foreign missions.

So she questioned and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital element of the Hindu faith at its best. But, after that final confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the field. And Lilámani, flung back on the God within, had evolved a private creed of her own;—shedding the husks of Christian dogmas and the grosser superstitions of her own faith, and weaving together the mystical elements that are the life-blood of all religious beliefs.

For the lamps are many, but the flame is one....

Not till the consummation of motherhood had lifted her status—in her own eyes at least—did she venture to speak intimately with Nevil on this vital matter. Though debarred from sharing of sacred ceremonies, she could still aspire to be true Sahardamini—'spiritual helpmate.' But to that end he also must co-operate; he must feel the deeper need....

"If I am bothering you with troublesome questions—forgive. But, in our Indian way of marriage, it is taught that without sharing spiritual life there cannot arrive true union," she had explained, not without secret tremors lest she fail to evoke full response. And what such failure would mean, for her, she could hardly expect him to understand.

But—by the blessing of Sarasvati, Giver of Wisdom—she had succeeded, beyond hope, in dispelling the shy reluctance of his race to talk of the 'big little things.' Even to-day she could recall the thrill of that moment:—he, kneeling beside the great chair in his studio—their sanctuary; she holding the warm bundle of new life against her breast.

In one long look his eyes had answered her. "Nothing short of 'true union' will satisfy me," he had said with a quiet seriousness more impressive than any lovers' fervour. "God knows if I'm worthy to enter your inner shrine. But unwilling—never. In the 'big little things' you are pre-eminent. I am simply your extra child—mother of my son."

That tribute was her charter of wifehood. It linked love with life; it set her, once for all, beyond the lurking fear of Jane; and gave her courage to face the promised visit to India, when Roy was six months old, to present him to his grandfather, Sir Lakshman Singh.

They had stayed nearly a year; a wonderful year of increasing knowledge, of fuller awakening ... and yet!

The ache of anticipation had been too poignant. The foolish half-hope that Mátaji might relent and sanctify this first grandchild with her blessing, was—in the nature of things Oriental—foredoomed to failure. And not till she found herself back among sights and sounds hauntingly familiar, did she fully awake to the changes wrought in her by marriage with one of another race. For, if she had profoundly affected Nevil's personality, he had no less profoundly influenced her sense of values both in art and life.

But no shadow had clouded the joy of reunion with her father; for both were adepts in the fine art of loving, the touchstone of every human relation. And in talk with him she could straighten out her tangle of impressions, her secret doubts and fears.

Also there had been Rama, elder brother, studying at college and loving as ever to the sister transformed into English-wife—yet sister still. And there had been fuller revelation of the wonders of India, in their travels northward, even to the Himalayas, abode of Shiva, where Nevil must go to escape the heat and paint more pictures—always more pictures. Travelling did not suit her. She was too innately a creature of shrines and sanctities. And in India—home of her spirit—there seemed no true home for her any more....

Five years later, when Roy was six and Christine two and a half, they had been tempted to repeat their visit, even in the teeth of stern protests from Jane, who regarded the least contact with India as fatal to the children they had been misguided enough to bring into the world. That second time, things had been easier; and there had been the added delight of Roy's eager interest; his increasing devotion to the grandfather, whose pride and joy in him rivalled her own.

"In this little man we have the hope of England and India!" he would say, only half in joke. "With East and West in his soul—the best of each—he will cast out the devils of conflict and suspicion and draw the two into closer understanding of one another."

And, in secret, Lilámani dreamed and prayed that some day ... possibly ... who could tell——?

For herself she paid it willingly. But—must Roy pay also? And in what fashion? How could she fail to imbue him with the finest ideals of her race? But how if the magnet of India proved too strong——? To hold the scales even was a hard task for human frailty. And the time of her absolute dominion was so swiftly slipping away from her. Always, in the back of her mind, loomed the dread shadow of school; and her Eastern soul could not accept it without a struggle. Only yesterday, Nevil had spoken of it again—no doubt because Jane made trouble—saying too long delay would be unfair for Roy. So it must be not later than September next year. Just only fifteen months! Nevil had told her, laughing, it would not banish him to another planet. But it would plunge him into a world apart—utterly foreign to her. Of its dangers, its ideals, its mysterious influences, she knew herself abysmally ignorant. She must read. She must try and understand. She must believe Nevil knew best—she, who had not enough knowledge and too much love. But she was upheld by no sustaining faith in this English fashion of school, with its decree of too early separation from the supreme influences of mother and father—and home....

Later on, that evening, when she knelt by Roy's bed for good-night talk and prayer, his arms round her neck, his cool cheek against hers, the rebellion she could not altogether stifle surged up in her afresh. But she said not a word.

It was Roy who spoke, as if he had read her heart.

"Mummy, Aunt Jane's been talking to Daddy again about school. Oh, I do hate her!" (This in fervent parenthesis.)

She only tightened her hold and felt a small quiver run through him.

"Will it be fearfully soon? Has Daddy told you?"

"When?"

"Not till next year, in the autumn. September."

"Oh, you good—goodest Mummy!"