tears....

If only one could keep it up----!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: Holy man.]

[Footnote 14: Prayer.]

[Footnote 15: Crocodile.]

CHAPTER IX.

"Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;

* * * * *

And if I turn from but one sin, I turn
Unto a smile of thine."
--ALICE MEYNELL.

For Roy himself, no less than Aruna, the passing of those golden October
weeks had been an experience as beautiful as it was unique. The very
beauty and bewilderment of it had blinded him, at first, to the
underlying danger for himself and her. Bewilderment sprang from an eerie
sense--vivid to the verge of illusion--that his mother was with him
again in the person of Aruna:--a fancy enhanced by the fact that his
entire knowledge of Indian womanhood--the turns of thought and phrase,
the charm, at once sensuous and spiritual--was linked indissolubly with
her. And the perilous charm had penetrated insidiously deeper than he
knew. By the time he realised what was happening, the spell was upon
him; his will held captive in silken meshes he had not the heart to
snap.

As often as not, in that early stage, he craved sight and sound of her
simply because she wore a sari and carried her head and moved her hands
just so; because her mere presence stirred him with a thrill that
blended exquisite pleasure, exquisite pain. There were times he would
contrive to be alone in the room with her; not talking; not even looking
at her--because her face disturbed the illusion; simply letting the feel
of her presence ease that inner ache--subdued, not stilled--for the
mother who had remained more vitally one with him than nine mothers in
ten are able, or willing, to remain with their grown-up sons.

Thea Leigh, watching unobtrusively, had caught a glimpse of the strange
dual influence at work in him. She had occasionally seen him with his
mother; and had gleaned some idea of their unique relation; partly from
Lance, partly from her intimate link with her own Theo, half a world
away; nearly eighteen now, and eager to join up before all was over. So
her troubled scrutiny was tempered with a measure of understanding. Roy
had always attracted her. And now, unmothered--the wound not yet
healed--she metaphorically gathered him to her heart; would have done so
physically without hesitation; but that Vincent had his dear and foolish
qualms about her promi