varna_, meaning
colour, as _caste_, a shirt-of-mail that protected from disaster.

Sometimes as he dropped back past the _tonga_, the face of Bootea would
appear beneath the lifted curtain, and though on the lips would be a
sweet ravishing smile, the eyes were pathetic, full of heart hunger.
Sometimes he vowed that he would put off the parting--dream on; carry
her on to her people at Chunda. Then he would realise that this was
cowardice, a desire flooding his sense of nobility into a chasm of
possible disaster; not fair to the girl; the animal mastery of male
over female, the domination of sex. Beyond doubt, wrapped in his arms,
not even the omnipotence of the gods would take her away from him. If
there were less innate nobility in his avatar, if he were like men that
were called red-blooded men, yet lacking the finer sensibility, this
might be; not a villainous rush, just drifting. That was it, the
superlative excellence of the Gulab; the very quality that attracted,
was the shield, the immaculate robe that clothed her and preserved her
like a vestal virgin from such violation. Barlow could not word all
these things; subconsciously they swayed him--like the magnetic needle,
always toward the pole of right.

When they had topped the pass and descended into the valley of the
Narbudda, clothed in arboreal beauty, passed from a forest of evergreen
_sal_ to giant teak trees with huge umbrella-like leaves that formed a
canopy over the straight column-like boles of eighty feet, and on
amidst topes of wild mango and wild date, down, down, to the lower
levels where the _dhak_ jungles gave way to feathery bamboo and
plantain and waving grass, the sun, like a great ball of molten gold,
was splashing its yellow sheen upon the waters of a stream that hurried
south to Mother Narbudda.

There was a small village of Gonds, or Korkus, like a toy thing, the
houses woven from split bamboo, nestling against the billowing hills.

"Here we will rest and eat," Barlow said to the Gulab.

"As the Sahib wishes," she answered, and smiled at him like a child.

The huge medallion of gold had slid down in the west from the dome
through which were shot great streamers of red and mauve, and a peacock
perched high in a sal tree far up on the mountainside sent forth his
strident cry of "Miaou! miaou! miaou!" his evening salute to the god of
warmth.

As the harsh call, like an evening _muezzin_, died out, the sweet song
of a shama, in tones