After all that, what could he do, but sharply apply the curb and remove himself—­for a time—­in the devout hope that ‘things’ had not gone too far?  He had not the assurance to suppose she was already in love with him; but patently the possibility was there.

So—­like Thea—­he had come to see the Delhi inspiration in a new and surprising light.  Setting forth in search of Dyan, he was, in effect, running away from himself—­and Aruna, no less.  If not actually in love, he very soon would be—­did he dare to let himself go.

And why not—­why not?  The old unreasoning rebellion stirred in him afresh.  His mother being gone, temptation tugged the harder.  Home, without the Indian element, was almost unthinkable.  If only he could take back Aruna!  But for him there could be no ‘if.’  He had tacitly given his word—­to her.  And in any case there was his father—­the Sinclair heritage—­So all his fine dreams of helping Aruna amounted to this—­that it was he who might be driven, in the end, to hurt her more than any of them.  Life that looked such a straight-ahead business for most people, seemed to bristle with pitfalls and obstacles for him; all on account of the double heritage that was at once his pride, his inspiration, and his stone of stumbling.

* * * * *

Endless wakeful hours of the night journey were peopled with thoughts and visions of Aruna—­her pansy face and velvet-soft eyes, now flashing delicate raillery, now lifted in troubled appeal.  A rainbow creature—­that was the charm of her.  Not beautiful—­he thanked his stars; since his weakness for beauty amounted to a snare, but attractive—­perilously so.  For, in her case, the very element that drew him was the barrier that held them apart.  The irony of it!

Was she lying awake too, poor child—­missing him a little?  Would she marry an Indian—­ever?  Would she turn her back on India—­even for him?  Unanswerable questions hemmed her in.  Could she even answer them herself?  Too well he understood how the scales of her nature hung balanced between conflicting influences.  As he was, racially, so was she, spiritually, a divided being; yet, in spite of waverings, Rajputni at the core, with all that word implies to those who know.  If she lacked his mother’s high sustained courage, her flashes of spirit shone out the brighter for her lapses into womanly weakness—­as in that poignant moment by the tank, which had so nearly upset his own equilibrium.  Vividly recalling that moment, it hurt him to realise that weeks might pass before he could see her again.  No denying he wanted her; felt lost without her.  The coveted Delhi adventure seemed suddenly a very lonely affair; not even a clear inner sense of his mother’s presence to bear him company.  No dreams lately; no faint mystical intimation of her nearness, since the wonderful hour with his grandfather.  Only in the form of that strange and lovely illusion had she seemed vitally near him since he left Chitor.