sm of beauty
and art. Like his father, he hated politics; and Westernised India is
nothing if not political. It was a true instinct that warned him to keep
clear of that muddy stream, and render his mite of service to India in
the exercise of his individual gift. That would be in accord with one of
his mother's wise and tender sayings: (his memory was jewelled with
them) "Look always first at your own gifts. They are sign-posts,
pointing the road to your true line of service." Could he but
immortalise the measure of her spirit that was in him, that were true
service to India--and more than India. There are men created for action.
There are men created to inspire action. And the world has equal need of
both.

He had things to say on paper that would take him all his time; and
Udaipur had metaphorically opened her arms to him. The Resident and his
wife had been more than kind. He had his books; his cool, lofty rooms in
the Guest House; his own private boat on the Lake; and freedom to go his
own unfettered way at all hours of the day or night. There the simmering
novel had begun to move with a life of its own; and while that state of
being endured, nothing else mattered much in earth or heaven.

For seven weeks he had worked at it without interruption; and for seven
weeks he had been happy: companioned by the vivid creatures of his
brain; and, better still, by a quickened undersense of his mother's
vital share in the 'blossom and fruit of his life.' The danger of
becoming embedded had been no myth: and at the back of his brain there
had lurked a superstitious reluctance to break the spell.

But Lance was Lance: no one like him. Moreover, he had known well enough
that anticipation of breakers ahead was no fanciful nightmare; but a
sane corrective to the ostrich policy of those who had sown the evil
seed and were trying to say of the fruit--'It is not.' Letters from
Dyan, and spasmodic devouring of newspapers, kept him alive to the
sinister activities of the larger world outside. News from Bombay grew
steadily more disquieting:--strikes and riots, fomented by agitators,
who lied shamelessly about the nature of the new Bills--; hostile crowds
and insults to Englishwomen. Dyan more than hinted that if the
threatened outbreak were not resolutely crushed at the start, it might
prove a far-reaching affair; and Roy had not the slightest desire to
find himself 'packed away in cotton-wool,' miles from the scene of
action. Clearly