t had not given Sir Nevil 'the surprise of his life,' it had given
him the deepest, most abiding gratification he had known since his inner
light had gone out, with the passing of her who had been his inspiration
and his all. Dear though his children were to him, they had remained
secondary, always. Roy came nearest--as his heir, and as the one in whom
her spirit most clearly lived again. Since she went, he had longed for
the boy; but remembering her plea on that summer day of decision--her
mountain-top of philosophy, 'to take by leaving, to hold by letting
go'--he had studiously refrained from pressing Roy's return. Now, at a
word from Tara, he had sped home in the hot season; and--hard on the
heels of a mysteriously broken engagement--had claimed her at sight.

Yesterday their sense of strangeness had made silence feel
uncomfortable. Now that they slipped back into the old intimacy, it felt
companionable. Yet neither was thinking directly of the other. Each was
thinking of the woman he loved.

By chance their eyes encountered in a friendly smile, and Roy spoke.

"Daddums--you've come alive! I believe you're _almost_ as happy over
it--as I am?"

"You're not far out. You see"--his eyes grew graver--"I'm feeling ...
Mother's share, too. Did you ever realise...?"

"Partly. Not all--till just now. Tara told me."

There was a pause. Then Sir Nevil looked full at his son.

"Roy--_I've_ got something to tell you--to show you ... if you can
detach your mind for an hour----?"

"Why, of course. _What_ is it--where?"

He looked round the room. Instinctively, he knew it concerned his
mother.

"Not here. Upstairs--in her House of Gods." He saw Roy flinch. "If _I_
can bear it, old boy, you can. And there's a reason--you'll understand."

The little room above the studio had been sacred to Lilamani ever since
her home-coming as a bride of eighteen; sacred to her prayers and
meditations; to the sandalwood casket that held her 'private god'; for
the Indian wife has always one god chosen for special worship--not to be
named to any one, even her husband. And although a Christian Lilamani
had discontinued that form of devotion, the tiny blue image of the
Baby-god, Krishna, had been a sacred treasure always, shown, on rare
occasions only, to Roy. To enter that room was to enter her soul. And
Roy, shrinking apart, felt himself unworthy--because of Rose.

On the threshold there met him the faint scent of sandalwood that
pervaded