ure of queer reserves and aloofness and passionate pride of
race. The friendliest were baffled by her incomprehensible lack of
social instinct, the fruit of India's purdah system. Loyal wives and
mothers who 'adored' their children--yet spent most of their day in
pursuit of other interests--were nonplussed by her complete absorption
in the joys and sanctities of home. Yet, in course of time, her patent
simplicity and sincerity had disarmed prejudice. The least perceptive
could not choose but see that she was genuinely, intrinsically
different, not merely in the matter of iridescent silks and saris, but
in the very colour of her soul.

Not that they would have expressed it so. To talk about the soul and its
colour savoured of being psychic or morbid--which Heaven forbid! The
soul of the right-minded Bramleigh matron was a neutral-tinted, decently
veiled phantom, officially recognised morning and evening, also on
Sundays, but by no means permitted to interfere with the realities of
life.

The soul of Lilamani Sinclair--tremulous, passionate and aspiring--was a
living flame, that lighted her thoughts, her prayers, her desires; and
burned with clearer intensity because her religion had been stripped of
all feastings and forms and ceremonies by a marriage that set her for
ever outside caste. The inner Reality--free of earth-born mists and
clouds--none could take from her.

God manifest through Nature, the Divine Mother, must surely accept her
incense and sacrifice of the spirit, since no other was permitted. Her
father had given her that assurance; and to it she clung, as a child in
a crowd clings confidingly to the one familiar hand.

She was none the less eager to glean all she could assimilate of the
religion to which her husband conformed, but in which, it seemed, he did
not ardently believe. Her secret pangs on this score had been eased a
little by later knowledge that it was he who shielded her from tacit
pressure to make the change of faith expected of her by certain members
of his family. Jane--out of regard for his wishes--had refrained from
frontal attacks; but more than one flank movement had been executed by
means of the Vicar (a second cousin) and of Aunt Julia--a mild elder
Sinclair, addicted to foreign missions.

She had not told Nevil of these tentative fishings for her soul, lest
they annoy him and he put a final veto on them. Being well versed in
their Holy Book, she wanted to try and fathom their stra