d keep silence, and then I can at once both hear and see,
even when no sound is uttered. Now, while I am looking at you, it is as
good as listening to your voice."

The Devotee became quite excited as I spoke, and exclaimed: "God speaks
to me, not only with His mouth, but with His whole body."

I said to her: "When I am silent I can listen with my whole body. I have
come away from Calcutta here to listen to that sound."

The Devotee said: "Yes, I know that, and therefore I have come here to
sit by you."

Before taking her leave, she again bowed to me, and touched my feet.
I could see that she was distressed, because my feet were covered. She
wished them to be bare.

Early next morning I came out, and sat on my terrace on the roof. Beyond
the line of trees southward I could see the open country chill and
desolate. I could watch the sun rising over the sugar-cane in the East,
beyond the clump of trees at the side of the village. Out of the deep
shadow of those dark trees the village road suddenly appeared. It
stretched forward, winding its way to some distant villages on the
horizon, till it was lost in the grey of the mist.

That morning it was difficult to say whether the sun had risen or not. A
white fog was still clinging to the tops of the trees. I saw the Devotee
walking through the blurred dawn, like a mist-wraith of the morning
twilight. She was singing her chant to God, and sounding her cymbals.

The thick haze lifted at last; and the sun, like the kindly grandsire of
the village, took his seat amid all the work that was going on in home
and field.

When I had just settled down at my writing-table, to appease the hungry
appetite of my editor in Calcutta, there came a sound of footsteps on
the stair, and the Devotee, humming a tune to herself, entered, and
bowed before me. I lifted my head from my papers.

She said to me: "My God, yesterday I took as sacred food what was left
over from your meal."

I was startled, and asked her how she could do that.

"Oh," she said, "I waited at your door in the evening, while you were at
dinner, and took some food from your plate when it was carried out."

This was a surprise to me, for every one in the village knew that I had
been to Europe, and had eaten with Europeans. I was a vegetarian, no
doubt, but the sanctity of my cook would not bear investigation, and the
orthodox regarded my food as polluted.

The Devotee, noticing my sign of surprise, said: "My God, w