e thanked his
stars; since his weakness for beauty amounted to a snare, but
attractive--perilously so. For, in her case, the very element that drew
him was the barrier that held them apart. The irony of it!

Was she lying awake too, poor child--missing him a little? Would she
marry an Indian--ever? Would she turn her back on India--even for him?
Unanswerable questions hemmed her in. Could she even answer them
herself? Too well he understood how the scales of her nature hung
balanced between conflicting influences. As he was, racially, so was
she, spiritually, a divided being; yet, in spite of waverings, Rajputni
at the core, with all that word implies to those who know. If she lacked
his mother's high sustained courage, her flashes of spirit shone out the
brighter for her lapses into womanly weakness--as in that poignant
moment by the tank, which had so nearly upset his own equilibrium.
Vividly recalling that moment, it hurt him to realise that weeks might
pass before he could see her again. No denying he wanted her; felt lost
without her. The coveted Delhi adventure seemed suddenly a very lonely
affair; not even a clear inner sense of his mother's presence to bear
him company. No dreams lately; no faint mystical intimation of her
nearness, since the wonderful hour with his grandfather. Only in the
form of that strange and lovely illusion had she seemed vitally near him
since he left Chitor.

Graceless ingratitude--that 'only.' For now, looking back, he clearly
saw how the beauty and bewilderment of that early phase--so mysteriously
blending Aruna with herself--had held his emotions in cheek, lifted
them, purified them; had saved him, for all he knew, from surrender to
an overwhelming passion that might conceivably have swept everything
before it. Pure fantasy--perhaps. But he felt no inclination to argue
out the unarguable. He preferred simply unquestioningly to believe that,
under God, he owed his salvation to her. And after all--take it
spiritually or psychologically--that was in effect the truth....

Towards morning, utter weariness lulled him into a troubled sleep--not
for long. He awoke, chilled and heavy-eyed, to find the unheeded
loveliness of a lemon-yellow dawn stealing over the blank immensity of
earth and sky.

In a moment he was up, stretching cramped limbs, thanking goodness for a
carriage to himself, leaning out and drinking huge draughts of crisp
clean air, fragrant with the ghost of a whiff of wood