her
argument he turned through a side door into the palace.

Within ten minutes he was seated in his throne-room. One minute later
his prisoners stood in front of him, still holding each other's hands,
and the guard withdrew. The great doors opening on the marble outer hall
clanged tight, and in this room there were no carved screens through
which a hidden, rustling world might listen. There was gold-incrusted
splendor--there were glittering, hanging ornaments that far outdid the
peacocks' feathers of the canopy above the throne; but the walls were
solid, and the marble floor rang hard and true.

There was no nook or corner anywhere that could conceal a man. For a
minute, still bejewelled in his robes of state and glittering as the
diamonds in his head-dress caught the light from half a dozen hanging
lamps, the Maharajah sat and gazed at them, his chin resting on one hand
and his silk-clad elbow laid on the carved gold arm of his throne.

"Why am I troubled?" he demanded suddenly.

"You know!" said the missionary. His daughter clutched his hand tightly,
partly to reassure him, partly because she knew that a despot would be
bearded now in his gold-bespattered den, and fear gripped her.

"Maharajah-sahib, when I came here with letters from the government of
India and asked you for a mission house in which to live and work, I
told you that I came as a friend--as a respectful sympathizer. I told
you I would not incite rebellion against you, and that I would not
interfere with native custom or your authority so long as acquiescence
and obedience by me did not run counter to the overriding law of the
British Government."

Howrah did not even move his head in token that he listened, but his
tired eyes answered.

"To that extent I promised not to interfere with your religion."

Howrah nodded.

"Once--twice--in all nine times--I came and warned you that the practice
of suttee was and is illegal. My knowledge of Sanskrit is only slight,
but there are others of my race who have had opportunity to translate
the Sanskrit Vedas, and I have in writing what they found in them. I
warned you, when that information reached me, that your priests have
been deliberately lying to you--that the Vedas say: 'Thrice-blessed is
she who dies of a broken heart because her lord and master leaves her.'
They say nothing, absolutely nothing, about suttee or its practice,
which from the beginning has been a damnable invention of the priests.
B