our
faces."

"Dyan Singh, if I have hurt you, it was quite unintentional. You know
that. But now, _with_ intention, you are hurting me." Her dignity and
gentleness, the justice of her reproof, smote him silent; and she went
on: "You forget, it is the same among your own people. Aunt Lila was
cast out--for always. With an English girl that could never be."

Too distraught for argument, he harked back to the personal issue. "With
_you_ there would be no need. I would live altogether like an
Englishman----"

"Oh, _stop_!" she broke out desperately. "Don't start all over
again----"

"Look alive, you two slackers," shouted Roy, from the far corner of the
road. "I'm responsible for keeping the team together."

"Coming!" called Tara, and turned on Dyan a final glance of appeal. "I'm
_sorry_ from the bottom of my heart. I can't say more."--And setting
the pace, she hurried forward.

For the fraction of a second, he hesitated. An overmastering impulse
seized him to walk off in the opposite direction. His eager love for
them all had suddenly turned to gall. But pride forbade. He would not
for the world have them guess at his rebuff--not even Aruna....

* * * * *

He slept little that night; and it was not Dyan Singh of New College who
awoke next morning. It was Dyan Singh, Rajput, Descendant of the Sun.
Yet the foolish round of life must go on as if no vital change had come
to pass.

That afternoon, he was going with Roy to a select drawing-room meeting.
A certain Mr Ramji Lal had been asked to read a paper on the revival of
Indian arts and crafts. Dyan had been looking forward to it keenly; but
now, sore and miserable as he was--all sense of purpose and direction
gone--he felt out of tune with the whole thing.

He would have been thankful to cry off. Roy, however, must not suspect
the truth--Roy, who himself might be the stumbling-block. The suspicion
stung like a scorpion; though it soothed a little his hurt pride of
race.

Embittered and antagonistic, he listened only with half his mind to his
own countryman's impassioned appeal for renewal of the true Swadeshi[1]
spirit in India; renewal of her own innate artistic culture, her faith
in the creative power of thought and ideas. That spirit--said the
speaker--has no war-cries, no shoutings in the market-place. It is a way
of looking at life. Its true genesis and inspiration is in the home.
Like flame, newly-lit, it needs cherishing.