to fulfil her womanhood through
marriage rather than through work. And in the light of that discovery,
she saw her dilemma plain. Either she must hope to marry an Englishman
and break with India, like Aunt Lilamani; or accept, at the hands of the
matchmaker, an enlightened bridegroom, unseen, unknown, whose family
would overlook--at a price--her advanced age and English adventures.

Against the last, all that England and Oxford had given her rose up in
revolt ... But the discarded, subconscious Aruna was centuries older
than the half-fledged being who hovered on the rim of the nest,
distrustful of her untried wings and the pathless sky. That Aruna had,
for ally, the spirit of the ages; more formidable, if less assertive,
than the transient spirit of the age. And the fledgling Aruna knew
perfectly well that the Englishman of her alternative was,
confessedly--Roy. His mother being Indian, she innocently supposed there
would be no trouble of prejudice; no stupid talk of the gulf that she
and Dyan had set out to bridge. The fact that Dyan had failed only made
her the more anxious to succeed....

Soon after arriving, she had taken up hospital work in the women's ward,
because Miss Hammond was kind; and her educated self had need of
occupation. Her other self--deeply loving her grandfather--had urged her
to try and live at home,--so far as her unregenerate state would permit.

As out-of-caste, she had been exempt from kitchen work; debarred from
touching any food except the portion set aside for her meals, that were
eaten apart in Sir Lakshman's room--her haven of refuge. In the Inside,
she was at the mercy of women's tongues and the petty tyranny of Mataji;
antagonistic as ever; sharpened and narrowed with age, even as her
grandfather had mellowed and grown beautiful, with the unearthly beauty
of the old, whose spirit shines visibly through the attenuated veil of
flesh. Aruna, watching him, with clearer understanding, marvelled how he
had preserved his serenity of soul through a lifetime of Mataji's
dominion.

And the other women--relations in various degrees--took their tone from
her, if only for the sake of peace:--the widowed sister-in-law, suavely
satirical; a great-aunt, whose tongue clacked like a rice-husker; two
cousins, correctly betrothed to unseen bridegrooms, entitled to look
askance at the abandoned one, who was neither wife nor mother; and two
children of a poor relation--embryo women, who echoed the jeers